From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Tue Jul 1 16:05:59 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 15:35:59 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] More on Harry Copyrighter Message-ID: <20030701103559.5FF4D50077@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030701/d744b7f3/attachment.pl From aarathi_c at hotmail.com Wed Jul 2 11:16:22 2003 From: aarathi_c at hotmail.com (Aarathi Chellappa) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2003 05:46:22 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] List Admins may be home free Message-ID: The article mentions list admins as well, but the main thrust is bloggers. aarathi http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59424,00.html Bloggers Gain Libel Protection The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they republish, extending crucial First Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers. Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The ruling effectively differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily. One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they're not just selling information -- they're selling reliability," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But on blogs or e-mail lists, people aren't necessarily selling anything, they're just engaging in speech. That freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you were held liable for every piece of information you cut, paste and forward." The court based its decision on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, or the CDA. That section states, "... no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Three cases since then -- Zeran v. AOL, Gentry v. eBay and Schneider v. Amazon -- have granted immunity to commercial online service providers. Tuesday's court ruling clarifies the reach of the immunity granted by the CDA to cover noncommercial publishers like list-server operators and others who take a personal role in deleting or approving messages for online publication. "Here, the court basically said that when it comes to Internet publication, you can edit, pick and choose, and still be protected," said Cohn. The case traces back to a North Carolina town in 1999, where handyman Robert Smith was repairing a truck owned by attorney and art collector Ellen Batzel. Smith claimed to have overheard Batzel say she was related to Nazi Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler. He said he concluded that the European paintings he saw in her home must be stolen goods, and shared this in an e-mail he sent to the editor of the Museum Security Network, an organization that publishes information about stolen art. Without telling Smith the e-mail would be published, Ton Cremers -- the sole operator of Amsterdam-based Museum Security Network �- made minor edits, then posted Smith's e-mail to a list of about 1,000 museum directors, journalists, auction houses, gallery owners and Interpol and FBI agents. Three months later, Batzel learned of the post. She contacted Cremers to deny both the stolen art and Nazi ancestry allegations. She also said Smith's claims were motivated by financial disputes over contracting work. Smith said he had no idea Cremers would publish a private e-mail on the list or on the Web. Batzel sued Smith, Cremers and the Museum Security Network for defamation and won. Cremers appealed. The appeals court questioned whether Cremers' minor edits to Smith's e-mail altered it so much that the post became a new piece of expression, and decided it had not. But because Smith claims he didn't know the e-mail would be published, the court also questioned whether the immunity provision of the Act applied, and passed the case back to the district court. The lower court will reconsider whether Cremers had reasonable belief that Smith's e-mail was intended for publication. "Some weblogs are interesting mixes of original and forwarded content, so this issue may come up again in the courts," EFF's Cohn said. "Where that legal line is drawn may become a point of contention." Ellen Batzel says the case changed her life. "This was a small, North Carolina mountain town -- I talked to the (district attorney) and he said 'Get a dog, get a gun, get a security system or better yet get out of town.' I sold my house and moved. I've been hurt in my professional reputation and in my private life. "I know what free speech is, and I support it, but this is about invasion of privacy and my civil liberty. Every time I meet someone now, I have to say, 'Hi, I'm not Himmler's granddaughter." Attorney Howard Fredman, who represented Batzel in the case, said the next legal steps could include a rehearing before the appeals court, or petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court. _________________________________________________________________ Reconnect with old pals. Relive the happy times. http://www.batchmates.com/msn.asp With just one click. From jyotsna_b at hotmail.com Wed Jul 2 13:35:55 2003 From: jyotsna_b at hotmail.com (jyotsna balakrishnan) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2003 13:35:55 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Public Domain Enhancement Act Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030702/57c04e66/attachment.html From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Wed Jul 2 19:23:38 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 18:53:38 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Harry Copyrighter Message-ID: <20030702135338.C662B500CA@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030702/02af0778/attachment.pl From kream77 at yahoo.com Thu Jul 3 00:10:37 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 19:40:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Courts extend libel protection for email list editors, webloggers. Message-ID: <20030702184037.53950.qmail@web12307.mail.yahoo.com> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59424,00.html 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. basically, the case "differentiates conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel, from certain forms of online communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that DIY publishers like bloggers cannot be sued as easily" aniruddha / karim shankar ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Thu Jul 3 16:15:14 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 15:45:14 +0500 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Talk on Patents and Pharmaceuticals Message-ID: <20030703104514.4E25550005@bom6.vsnl.net.in> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030703/8f0e9bb3/attachment.pl From badri at eff.org Fri Jul 4 00:18:52 2003 From: badri at eff.org (Badri Natarajan) Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 11:48:52 -0700 Subject: [Commons-Law] Public Domain Enhancement Act In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.1.20030703114302.00ac2590@mail.lawentrance.com> At 01:35 PM 7/2/2003 +0530, you wrote: >The proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act that the following article >talks about seems to be an interesting sequel to Eldred v. Ashcroft. Given >that most works older than 50 years are not generally economically viable, >what is the reason for stringent opposition to such efforts? How can these >expanding terms be reconciled with the ever expanding 'platform of the >public domain', i.e., the net? More on the Eldred Act in Lessig's blog: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_06.shtml#001318 This is just the latest entry, but he's the driving force behind it and has written a lot about it. The entertainment industry's argument is essentially that if copyright is allowed to lapse, then there will be no incentive for anyone to preserve such works and release them to the public, so the public will lose. This argument seems a bit fallacious to me considering the number of (currently) public domain movies (pre 1923 in the US) that are in release on video and DVD - lots of people seem to be making good money by releasing them, and in fact, the primary barrier to releasing a lot more old movies is that it is simply impossible to locate copyright holders and negotiate permissions, so the old nitrate stock just decays into non-existence. Badri -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030703/fce48add/attachment.html From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Fri Jul 4 10:05:24 2003 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (Sudhir Krishnaswamy) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 10:05:24 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Public Domain Enhancement Act References: Message-ID: Dear Jyotsna and Hi All It seems to me that what we see emerging is the development of a 'working' requirement into Copyright law. Conventionally the working requirement in patent law would require owners of patents to put patents to use or risk their exclusivity of use. The Public Domain Enhancement Act is trying to put in place a similar dynamic into Copyright law. Given the dilution of working requirements in patent law in the last few years it's not surprising that this is strongly opposed in the copyright arena as well!! Best Sudhir ----- Original Message ----- From: jyotsna balakrishnan To: commons-law at mail.sarai.net Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 1:35 PM Subject: [Commons-Law] Public Domain Enhancement Act The proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act that the following article talks about seems to be an interesting sequel to Eldred v. Ashcroft. Given that most works older than 50 years are not generally economically viable, what is the reason for stringent opposition to such efforts? How can these expanding terms be reconciled with the ever expanding 'platform of the public domain', i.e., the net? Jyotsna DAILY TECH E-LETTER | ARCHIVES By Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Wednesday, June 25, 2003; 6:02 PM Two members of Congress today introduced legislation they said would ensure the American public's access to the nation's intellectual and artistic heritage. The Public Domain Enhancement Act would require the owners of copyrighted works -- such as songs, books and software -- to pay a $1 fee to maintain their copyrights once 50 years have transpired from the work's original publication. If owners failed to pay the fee, the work would enter the public domain, and the public would be free to reproduce, republish or alter it. The legislation is aimed directly at recent changes to copyright law that extended the lifetime of copyrights from 75 to 95 years after the author of a work dies. The changes were part of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, which the Supreme Court upheld in January. The sponsors of today's bill said that the 1998 law prevents the public from building upon and preserving creative works. The Internet, they say, has made more information and creative works available to the public than ever before. It allows the public to preserve materials that their owners might forget about once they're no longer profitable, and is built on a foundation of copying, enhancing and sharing all manner of content. Perpetually extending copyright terms, they say, cuts away at what makes the Internet a vibrant and important cultural exchange. Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig, who argued the copyright extension case before the Supreme Court last year, said that longer copyright terms give large corporations like the Walt Disney Co. a lock on material that should be readily available online. hRep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the chief sponsors of the copyright proposal introduced today, cited Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent to the Supreme Court's January decision to uphold the Sonny Bono law. Breyer, Lofgren noted, made the point that excessive copyright lifetimes go too far to protect a small percentage of commercially valuable works. The justice wrote that only 2 percent of copyrighted works between 55 and 75 years old retain their commerical value. "As a result, there are so many works that are no longer published, read or even seen anymore that they have effectively been orphaned," Lofgren said in an interview. "It is time to give these treasures back to the public." Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the new legislation would restore the balance between copyright law and legitimate uses of works that no longer hold commercial value. "There are literally hundreds of millions of Web sites and other works that won't have economic value a few years from now but will continue to be copyrighted for 150 years, leaving archivists, historians and others interested in preserving these works shut out for no good reason," von Lohmann said. "As long as the author is finished exploiting the value of the work, it should fall into the public domain so that the best use can be made of it." Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, said consumers are not necessarily better off when copyrighted works lapse into the public domain. "Especially in the case of movies, those works are more available for public consumption when their owners have an economic incentive to preserve and market them," Taylor said. "Once those works fall into the public domain, those incentives are removed and consumers end up being the losers." Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said the legislation introduced today does not impose a severe burden on copyright owners. Instead, it requires them to take stock of their holdings to see which works still have commercial value. "This bill simply says, 'Fine you can keep your copyright term extension, but show that you really want to exploit the work,'" Zittrain said. "If you're not willing to even invest a dollar to retain the monopoly on it, then why is there any reason to think that the monopoly will cause you to do anything with it?" Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) joined Lofgren in introducing today's bill. TechNews.com Home © 2003 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Attention NRIs! Send money home in a jiffy. Find out how here. _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030704/0eaf5afe/attachment.html From monica at sarai.net Sun Jul 6 21:30:49 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 16:00:49 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Commons and the Magna Carta -1 Message-ID: <20030706160101.CFE4528DA80@mail.sarai.net> Dear All This is an interesting essay that traces the relationship between commons, rights and resources, by a very interesting historian whose earlier classic "The London Hanged" looks into the working class formation and its history of dispossession in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sitting here in Oslo we (raqs) are trying to understand their model of welfare. A right that is shared by all is that even if a piece of land might be private property, access to the water body is given to all. Therefore, there is nothing called a private beach. If it is private property, then those who want to access the water have to ensure that they keep 100 metres away from the owner's house. Besides that they can even sleep on the land... This article can also be read in association with Chatrapati Singh's "Common Property, Common Poverty". Within today's debates on IPL, it may be worthwhile to look into the long and tortured history of dispossession, engendered by capitalism. (the article is long and is coming in instalments...) best M http://bostonreview.net/BR28.3/linebaugh.nclk The Secret History of the Magna Carta Its most far-reaching provisions aren�t the ones we remember. Peter Linebaugh In one of his communiqu�from the Lancandan jungle of Central America Subcommandante Marcos, the spokesman of the indigenous people�s revolt that burst upon the world in 1994, referred, of all things, to the Magna Carta. The brilliant postmodern revolt cited a tedious premodern source. Why? Marcos described the global forces that daily suck out 92,000 barrels of oil, leaving behind �ecological destruction, agricultural plunder, hyperinflation, alcoholism, prostitution, and poverty� while the campesinos in Ocosingo have to cut wood to survive. The ejido, or village commons, has been destroyed, and its legal protection, Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution, repealed. The story of the extraction of natural resources and limiting indigenous people�s access to land is repeated around the world. Last summer hundreds of women seized the Chevron Escravos Oil Terminal in Nigeria (the word escravos means �slavery� in Portuguese). Its engineers have widened the Escravos River in the Bight of Benin, destroying the mangrove forest and the village of Ugborodo. Women can no longer hew wood for fuel or draw clean water for drink. Prostitution is the only �decent-paying job.�1 In the upland hamlets of Vietnam, where women collected firewood, bamboo shoots, medicinal plants, and vegetables, forest reserves have recently been enclosed by metal fence. Men can no longer legally climb trees for honey, nor cut timber for house repairs. The women of the hamlets suffer especially.2 These stories reflect three global trends: woodlands are being destroyed in favor of commercial profit,3 petroleum products are substituted as the base commodity of human reproduction and world economic development, and commoners are expropriated. �Life comes from women and food comes from land��these are axioms to the critique of globalization, liberalization, and privatization made by recent advocates of a subsistence perspective.4 Michael Watts has dubbed as �petro-violence� the terror, dislocation, separation, poverty, and pollution associated with petroleum extraction. The United States has intensified this pattern with war. The indigenous voice from the jungle invokes the Magna Carta not only to assert the familiar protections against state power associated with constitutional democracies, but the right to common resources as well. How can this be? What is the Magna Carta? The Magna Carta and Human Rights For eight centuries the Magna Carta has been venerated. �It was born with a grey Beard,� Samuel Johnson said. Scholars and scoundrels, judges and jackasses have fiddled with its diplomatics, paleography, translation, interpretation, and application. The story of its political and legal rights is known. Indeed it is too well-known, inasmuch as it is remembered largely as myth and as icon, as part of the foundation of �Western civilization� and the modern state. The Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), the Virginia Bill of Rights (1776), the Fifth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution quoted its language. Eleanor Roosevelt in her 1948 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, urging it to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, expressed the hope that it would take its place alongside the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. In 1956 Winston Churchill published the first volume of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, in which he glorified Anglo-American �brotherhood,� �destiny,� and �empire� by reverent references to childhood memories of the Magna Carta. Some have looked at the historical origins of the Magna Carta to challenge its mythical status. Geoffrey Robertson writes, �The appearance of �rights� as a set of popular propositions limiting the sovereign is usually traced to the Magna Carta in 1215, although that document had nothing to do with the liberty of individual citizens: it was signed by a feudal king who was feuding with thuggish barons, and was forced to accede to their demands.� But Robertson is mistaken as well. In fact the Magna Carta was not signed-- there is no evidence that King John could write. The real question is who traces rights to the Magna Carta and what are the rights? There is, I posit, a narrow, conservative interpretation of the Magna Carta and a more radical one that concerns individual citizens and commoners. The former, inscribed on a granite plinth by the American Bar Association, stresses �freedom under law� (my italics); the latter stresses authority under law�it extends beyond protections from state power and, deeply rooted in the experiences of working people, offers rights of subsistence to the poor. Robertson continues, again misreading history, saying that the Magna Carta �limited the power of the State (in a very elementary way, since the King was the State), and secondly it contained some felicitous phrases which gradually entered the common law and worked their rhetorical magic down the centuries.� To call the �felicitous phrases� magic is to overlook the struggle in the streets, the struggle in the prisons, the struggle in the slave ships, the struggle in the press, the struggle in Parliament over its interpretation. Runnymede and the Crusades In the years leading up to the drafting of the Magna Carta, events in the Church and in England ran parallel. The pontificate of Innocent III (1198�1216) corresponded to the reign of King John of England (1199�1216). The Fourth Crusade was launched in 1204. Constantinople was sacked; only the bubonic plague put an end to the Christian atrocities. That same year King John lost Normandy. Raising money to recover Normandy and to join the crusade, he oppressed the barons with scutage (tax paid by a knight in lieu of military service), the selling of women (John made a regular traffic in the sale of wards, maids of 14 and widows alike), forest stealing, and taking children hostage for ransom (he slaughtered 28 sons of Welsh hostages). In 1208, the year the pope launched a brutal crusade upon the heretics of Albi in the south of France, he placed King John under interdict, and in the following year excommunicated him and his kingdom. King John made up by surrendering his kingdom as a feudal fief to the pope. In 1214 King John�s ambitions in France were again dashed at the battle of Bouvines. In February 1215, short on funds and trying to control the rebellious barons, John made a vow to lead a crusade to the holy land to take it from the Moslem infidels. By becoming �a warrior of God� he hoped to enjoy immunities protecting him from the barons. The ruse was too late. In May the barons took London, and withdrew their homage and fealty. In the middle of June, 1215, on a meadow, Runnymede, along the River Thames the rebellious barons and King John promised on oath to be faithful to one another along the lines of the 63 chapters of the Magna Carta. The 63 chapters of liberties to the �freemen of England� were sealed, and peace was made viva voce with renewed homage. The charter protected the interests of the Church, the feudal aristocracy, the merchants, Jews, and, in provisions that are often overlooked it assumed a commons�it acknowledged the lives of the commoners. To see how it did this, let�s pause to look over some of the things it actually said. A Few Chapters from the 63 The provisions of the Magna Carta reveal among other things the famous chapter 39 from which habeas corpus, prohibition of torture, trial by jury, and the rule of law are derived: Chapter 39: No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or any way victimized, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. Chapter 40: To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay right or justice. We also see that �one of the first great stages in the emancipation of women is to be traced� to the Magna Carta.5 The most valuable individual provisions in the eyes of the only contemporary chronicler (a minstrel attached to Robert of B�une) are those treating the disparagement of women: Chapter 7: A widow shall have her marriage portion and inheritance forthwith and without difficulty after the death of her husband . . . Chapter 8: No widow shall be forced to marry so long as she wishes to live without a husband . . . It put a stop to the robberies of petty tyrants: Chapter 28: No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take anyone�s corn or other chattels unless he pays on the spot in cash for them . . . Other chapters have to be understood in terms of the energy ecology. It opposed privatization of common resources. Thus, chapter 33 refers to a common right of piscary: Henceforth all fish-weirs shall be cleared completely from the Thames and the Medway and throughout all England, except along the seacoast . . And chapters 47 and 48 refer to the common rights of the forest: Chapter 47: All forests that have been made forest in our time shall be immediately disafforested; and so be it done with river-banks that have been made preserves by us in our time [and] Chapter 48: All evil customs connected with forests and warrens, foresters and warreners, sheriffs and their officials, river-banks and their wardens shall immediately be inquired into in each county by twelve sworn knights of the same county who are to be chosen by good men of the same county and within forty days of the completion of the inquiry shall be utterly abolished by them so as never to be restored. . . . Chapters 39 and 40 are well-known, while 47 and 48, if noticed at all as part of the Magna Carta, are often discarded as feudal relics or English peculiarities. Looking at them more closely will give us a clue to the more expansive interpretation of the Magna Carta, but first we need to understand that the woods of that time were as important to the people as oil is in our time. From monica at sarai.net Sun Jul 6 21:38:38 2003 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2003 16:08:38 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Commons and the Magna Carta - 2 Message-ID: <20030706160845.5155228DA80@mail.sarai.net> The Secret History of the Magna Carta (2) The History of the Commons The labor process is the bedrock of human experience, though it might take chauvinist expressions, especially in chauvinist times, as the historian George Sturt wrote just before World War I. �What was the earlier English understanding of timber, the local knowledge of it, the patriarchal traditions of handling it?� The wheelwright learned truths of wood through his fingers and hands. Whether in watching the keen, unhurried loading and unloading of experienced carters or observing the untiring, unreliable, unlettered sawyers at work, Sturt�s descriptions were inseparable from the ecology of soil and timber, and reminded him�this is the long view�that �the settling of this island had only started about fifteen hundred years earlier and was still going on.� Without raising the flag, Rackham, the Cambridge botanist, flatly states, �to convert millions of acres of wildwood into farmland was unquestionably the greatest achievement of any of our ancestors.� J. M. Neeson, an authority on commoning, like Sturt, understood the uses of woods: lops and tops or snap-wood for the household, furze and weeds for fodder, bavins or sprays such as bakers and potters want for their ovens and kilns, where bean-stakes could be found, how hazel is for good sheepfolds, how to assemble a chimney-sweeping brush. The woodlands were a reservoir of fuel; they were a larder of delicacies; a medicine chest of simples and cures. Who enjoyed them? She writes, �The fuel, food and materials taken from common waste helped to make commoners of those without land, common-right cottages, or pasture rights. Waste gave them a variety of useful products, and the raw materials to make more. It also gave them the means of exchange with other commoners and so made them part of the network of exchange from which mutuality grew. More than this, common waste supported the economies of landed and cottage commoners too. It was often the terrain of women and children. And for everyone the common meant more than income.�13 This is the economy of uses, or the subsistence economy, or the economy of substances. Here is food, fire. Here is the human hearth, home. This is the economy, or labor of the household. Shelley asked, �What are thou Freedom?� and answered before considering justice, wisdom, or peace: For the labourer it is bread, And a comely table spread. Thou art clothes, and fire, and food For the trampled multitude. In these histories of the commons social and temporal specificity undermines the universal pretensions of law. They also tend to see that law was an instrument of the self-interest of rulers against which the recalcitrance of the poor might express itself in the ballads of the wildwood, in taking from the rich to give to the poor, and in not submitting to command for commandments� sake. They observe legal and religious responses to the struggle. A miner's trade unionist from the Forest of Dean expressed the religious response: �I believe in the sacred principle that God gave the earth to the human race for an eternal inheritance, not to be taken away by man-made laws; and the man or men who would attempt to rob us of our God-given natural rights, must incur the danger of revolution, or other modes of popular resistance.� The Yorkshire County rolls contain the name of the fugitive Robert Hod in 1226. Thus, the most famous of outlaws, Robin Hood, flourished at the moment of the Magna Carta. Historians of the commons can help clarify the rights imputed to the Magna Carta at its time. If it truly is of another epoch, why bother? Can we give them �a fine fetch,� or an interpretation fully appropriate for today? Consider the difference between common rights and human rights. First, common rights are embedded in a particular ecology with its local husbandry. Human rights are not. That is why they can so easily be rendered universal. For commoners, the expression from chapter 39, �law of the land,� refers not to the will of the sovereign. Commoners first think not of title deeds, but human deeds: how will this land be tilled? Does it require manuring? What grows there? They begin to explore. It is almost a natural attitude. Second, commoning is embedded in a labor process; it inheres in a particular praxis of field, upland, forest, marsh, coast. Common rights are entered into by labor. They belong to experience not schooling. Third, commoning is a collective endeavor as depicted, for example, in the many paintings of gleaning the harvest. Fourth, commoning, being independent of the state, is independent also of the temporality of the law and state. It�s much older. But this doesn�t mean that it�s dead, or pre-modern, or backward. The Palimpsest of Petroleum The etymology of the word �charter� comes from Greek meaning thick paper or parchment. When the writing on a parchment is erased, so that it can be used again, the result with the new words is called a palimpsest. This was not the fate of the Magna Carta. Something like it, however, has been the fate of the economy upon which it rested. An economic palimpsest is one where instead of finding the older words on a parchment which had been only partially rubbed out for the new words, we find that the economy we thought belonged to a different stage of history has not been fully erased, and in fact contains knowledge ignored by the new economy. Suppose we compared them, as follows: Food stamps Herbage Social security Pannage Medicare Turbary Housing aid Piscary Public education Chiminage Unemployment insurance Estovers Worker�s compensation Lops & tops Health insurance Vert & venison Small business loan Assart Public libraries Agistment Welfare Firebote While the comparison takes us not to a golden age, it raises questions: Are the columns equally consistent with war, crusades, and acquisition of hydrocarbon energy? How does class struggle alter from column to column, in the role of the state, in the role of money? Which column tends best to the values of mutuality and equality? In addition to the moral economists, Robin Hoods, and Levellers, let�s look at more familiar figures. As a boy Karl Marx picked berries at Easter time, a customary right in the town�s woods, and later he reported on the �theft� of wood by the Moselle peasantry that drew him to the critique of political economy. In exile and poverty he found recuperation in picnics upon Hampstead Heath, preserved by commoners� struggles. William Morris nurtured body and soul among the grotesque, majestic hornbeams of Epping Forest, a commons of 700 years. In Morris�s iconography of nature a forest was the place where you both lost yourself and found yourself. At the end of the 19th century as forests around the planet succumbed to the maps, trade, and law of empire, the woods became a place of dreams of commonage, preserved as often as not in children�s books from The Jungle Book to The Wind and the Willows set on the river Thames only an oar�s pull from Runnymede. The power to dream is not deracinated; it is part of recuperation and imagination.14 Roger of Asterby, local knight of Lincolnshire, envisioned conversations with Gabriel and St. Peter, who told him that inheritances should be restored to rightful owners and that justice should be without charge. �Whether as stimulant or a sedative such tales must have stirred the deepest wells of political consciousness in the most backward of backwoodsmen.� From them wrung the liberties of 1215. In wartime, the soldier is promised the earth. Roosevelt and Churchill�s 1941 Atlantic Charter, envisioning a world after Nazi tyranny, promised four freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear). Churchill would later write that the Atlantic charter was not �applicable to coloured races in colonial empires.�15 So when the U.N. Human Rights Commission began work on its Declaration of Human Rights after the war, W. E. B. Du Bois led forces intervening on behalf of the colonized people of the world. His Color and Democracy and Behold the Land are implicit critiques of the division between human rights and common resources. For him the meaning of �human rights� was a totally different proposition to the millions who were colonial subjects rather than putative free citizens. Du Bois challenged the American authors of the Bretton Woods agreements establishing the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank: �seven hundred fifty millions of people, a third of mankind, live in colonies. Cheap labor and materials are basic to postwar industry and finances. Was this matter mentioned in any form at Bretton Woods?�16 The National Negro Congress in June 1946 petitioned the U.N., as drafted by Du Bois, �An Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress.� It grounds the entire discussion of human rights in material realities, beginning with the description of the Afro-American in class terms and arguing that the deliberate disenfranchisement of the Negro in the American South also deprived the working class of self-protection in the North. He wrote in full cognizance of English history. He observed that the federal government �continually casts its influence with imperial aggression throughout the world.� And even when a strong political leader is able to �make some start toward preservation of natural resources and their restoration to the mass of people� the effort cannot last long. In explaining his appeal to the world, he writes, it is �this great search for common ground.�17 The exclusion of the dreams of the 750 million Du Bois spoke for after World War II reflected the succession of the United States to Caesar�s imperial crown. Today, facing the unchecked power of empire we may go into the woods to fetch the Magna Carta completely, as it helps establish that, to quote Shelley, �the rights of man are liberty and an equal participation of the commonage of nature.� While the Magna Carta is singular, an English peculiarity, its story is one of oppression, rebellion, and betrayal. It has become a story with global significance. We are commoners looking in at it from the outside. We have seen its history from the robber barons who became chivalric knights who became law lords who became �founding fathers.� Having studied their doings in the forest, in Palestine, in the law court, on the frontier, and now in Iraq, we have learned to be suspicious. The Magna Carta awaits further interrogation, as begun by Subcommandante Marcos. It has more for us than we thought. It may yield us both radical and restorative sustenance. The American Bar Association�s monument, we remember, found the epitome of the Magna Carta in the phrase �freedom under law.� The modern authority concludes, �taken as a whole the Charter was a remarkable statement of the rights of the governed and of the principle that the king should be ruled by law,� and the Victorian authorities sum it up: �the King is, and shall be below the law.� Yet even this is incomplete. If an epitome is needed, let it be �widow�s estovers,� both ample and just. _ Notes 1. Norimitsu Onishi, �As Oil Riches Flow, a Poor Village Rises Up,� New York Times, 22 December 2002. 2. Tuong Vi Pham, �Gender and the Management of Nature Reserves in Vietnam,� in Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia. 3. See particularly, �Midnight Notes,� Midnight Oil, Work, Energy, War, 1973�1992 (Autonomedia, 1992), 303�33. 4. Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen, The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy, translated by Patrick Camiller, Maria Mies, and Gerd Weih (New York: Zed, 1999). 5. J. C. Holt, Magna Carta (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965), 46. 6. Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1986). 7. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution ( Viking Press, 1972), 41�44. 8. George Sabine, The Works of Gerrard Winstanley (Cornell Univ. Press, 1941), 303; W. Wilson Hayes, Winstanley the Digger: A Literary Analysis of Radical Ideas in the English Revolution (Harvard Univ. Press, 1979), 240�41. 9. The originals of the Charter of the Forest are in the Bodleian and Durham Cathedral, the regent�s seal in green, the papal legate�s in yellow. 10. Francesco Gabrieli, ed., Arab Historians of the Crusades (Univ. of California Press, 1969), 260. 11. In contrast to the war widows of World War II who had to manage without estovers of common but rather upon a pension of �1 a week, which hardly covered lodging, heat, and food, the War Widows Archive at Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire) was collected by Iris Strange as part of a campaign to alleviate the appalling condition of widows as late as the 1960s. See Janis Lomas, �So I Married Again,� History Workshop Journal 38 (Fall 1994), and Geoffrey Field, The British Working Class in Wartime, 1939�45, ch. seven (forthcoming). 12. Gareth Lovell Jones and Richard Mabey, The Wildwood: In Search of Britain�s Ancient Forests (London: Aurum Press, 1993). 13. J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700�1820 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 158�59. 14. Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002). 15. Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Cornell Univ. Press, 1997). 16. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919�1963 (New York: Holt, 2000), 504. 17. In describing the postwar panopoly of state power Nancy Peluso has emphasized the concept of the political forest. These were landscapes of racialization. They were a terrain of imperial law. They were created by the dispossession of foresters and by the expropriation of those enjoying common rights. She and her colleagues are conducting an historical excavation that yields a new perspective, namely that the 750 million of the colored and colonized were the true commons of the planet. Originally published in the Summer 2003 issue of Boston Review ---------------------- Peter Linebaugh�s The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century has just been reissued in a second edition. Professor of history at the University of Toledo, he is also coauthor with Marcus Rediker of The Many-Headed Hydra. -- Monica Narula Sarai: The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 From surendrachandrawat at rediffmail.com Wed Jul 9 17:05:03 2003 From: surendrachandrawat at rediffmail.com (surendra singh chandrawat) Date: 9 Jul 2003 11:35:03 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] (no subject) Message-ID: <20030709113503.28877.qmail@mailweb34.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030709/3e757134/attachment.pl From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 9 18:21:32 2003 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 05:51:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Korean court OK's downloading music for free Message-ID: <20030709125132.31329.qmail@web13603.mail.yahoo.com> Court Says It`s OK to Download Music Files Free of Charge MAY 15, 2003 21:44 by Ho-Won Choi Tae-Hoon Lee (bestiger at donga.com jefflee at donga.com) The court dismissed a criminal charge against Soribada, a website that functioned like the American website Napster. The "single-judge panel" Criminal Division 3 of the Seoul District Court dismissed the criminal charge against the Yang brothers, who operated the website. They were indicted on bail in August of 2001 on a copyrights infringement charge. The prosecution requested the court render one-year sentence on them. In the opinion, the presiding judge Hwang Han-sik held, "The prosecution just argued that the defendants helped others violate the copyrights by allowing Soribada members to share music files. But the indictment failed to establish how their operation of the site led to infringement of copyrights. This court finds no specific facts constituting the elements of the crime allegedly committed by the defendants. The case does not warrant the indictment, and, therefore, this court hereby dismisses the charge against the defendants." The ruling confirmed the legality of downloading music from the website. Thus, Soribada users no longer have to worry about a criminal lawsuit. Embrain, an online marketing company, predicts that, in the future, 75% of the Internet users will use Soribada program to share their files. For now, less than half of the users use the program. The ruling shocked the recording labels and the music studios. The quality of MP3 files floating on the website equals that of the music recorded on CD ROM. Rejuvenation of the site will blow a devastating damage to the sale of music CDs. The recording industry is arguing that websites like Soribada costs it more than 250 billion won (or, approximately, $2 million) a year. Chairman of the Recording Industry Association of Korea Park Kyung-choon said, "I think we need an emergency meeting." In the meanwhile, the sale of MPS players is on a steady rise with the increased availability of online music files. With the players, people can play the downloaded files at ease. Online software and movie clip developers are also embracing themselves for the aftermath of this ruling. Soribada has served as a venue where not only music files, but also movie files and software have been posted for free downloading. Therefore, in the future, more Internet users will expectedly log onto the websites like Soribada in search of free downloads. The Yang brothers, who have operated the website since May of 2000, were indicted in 2001. Then, July of 2002, the Suwon District Court issued an injunction ordering the shutdown of the Soribada server. In response, the Yang brothers came up with a little modified Soribada II and have maintained it. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com From jeebesh at sarai.net Wed Jul 16 00:19:37 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:49:37 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Materials on Biotechnology Message-ID: <64771.213.187.170.114.1058294977.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Interesting materials on Biotechnology. http://www.aec.at/en/archives/festival_archive/festival_catalogs/festival_katalog_99.asp?iProjectID=8316 (will post one article from this content list)  Ars Electronica 1999 Life Science Festival Website 1999   Contents  Ars Electronica 99 • LifeScience Gerfried Stocker / Christine Schöpf  Novartis—new skills in the science of life Christian Seiwald New Images of Mankind Gerfried Stocker  I-Biology and Fake Life Construction Birgit Richard The Biotech Century Jeremy Rifkin   Advanced Cell Technology Robert Lanza   Decoding Iceland* Michael Specter   Genetic Predictions and Social Responses* Lori B. Andrews   Genes and Justice, Past and Present Daniel J. Kevles   Man is the End of the World* Derrick de Kerckhove / Paul Virilio   Genetic Engineering, Scientific-Industrial Revolution and Democratic Imagination Herbert Gottweis   Ecological and Sanitary - Crisis or Objectivity Crisis?* Bruno Latour   Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering: Certain Issues For Law And Policy R. V. Anuradha   The Thickness of Tissue Engineering: Biopolitics, Biotech, and the Regenerative Body Eugene Thacker   Markets, Antimarkets and the Fate of the Nutrient Cycles Manuel DeLanda   Remarks on the Theory of Biological and Asymmetrical Warfare from the Perspective of the US Georg Schöfbänker   Curie’s Children* Vilém Flusser   A History of Art Involving dna George Gessert   The Gene as a Cultural Icon Dorothy Nelkin   Gene_Mixing and Loops of the Self Birgit Richard   Space, Cyberspace, and Species Charles Tonderai Mudede   Transgenic Art Eduardo Kac   The Designed Body Gunther von Hagens   Genesis Eduardo Kac   Spike Gail Wight   Hamster Christoph Ebener / Frank Fietzek / Uli Winters   [Multiple_Dwelling] Fakeshop   Timeless Anita Gratzer   Ethnic Bleaching Mongrel   Stages Elements Humans Gina Czarnecki   The Long Road to Comprehensible Science Science Education Team   The Creative Gene Harvest Archive Gene Genies Worldwide   [prints] vier aminosäuren in folge Robert Spour / Mario Veitl   Micro Friendship Hiroshi Matoba / Yasushi Matoba   bugrace99   Why sync? Rupert Huber   Small Fish Wolfgang Münch / Kiyoshi Furukawa / Masaki Fujihata   Tracking the Net Marco Monzani / Franz Fischnaller   Anomalocaris Hiroo Iwata   Touchscreen Anna Anders / Klaus Gasteier   Motion Picture Emily Weil   The Bush Soul Rebecca Allen   in/outSite Ursula Damm / Michael Hoch   Telezone   CAVE Peter Kogler / Pascal Maresch / Franz Pomassl   Prix Ars Electronica Cyberarts 99 Christine Schöpf   Recombinant 9.9.99 Naut Humon   The Michael nyman band concert The Michael Nyman Band   Ridin´ A Train Wolfgang Dorninger   image manipulation soundtrack Jomasounds   openX August Black   Sound Drifting: I Silenzi Parlano Tra Loro Collin Fallows / Heidi Grundmann   Quote: Pierre Lévy Pierre Lévy   20 of the 20th Gerfried Stocker   And what is it that makes it Art? Bruno Beusch / Tina Cassani   Bump association.creation   Videoplace Myron W. Krueger / Katrin Hinrichsen   omv Klangpark Sam Auinger / Robin Rimbaud / Rupert Huber / Joachim Schnaitter / Markus Decker / Michael Nyman / Robert Worby / Wolfgang Dorninger / Gordon Paunovic   Liquid Space Werner Jauk / Heimo Ranzenbacher   Biographies   © AEC Ars Electronica Center Linz Museumsgesellschaft mbH, Impressum, Privacy Statement, info at aec.at From jeebesh at sarai.net Wed Jul 16 00:23:55 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 20:53:55 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] BT & GM: Certain Issues For Law And Policy Message-ID: <64834.213.187.170.114.1058295235.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> From shuddha at sarai.net Thu Jul 17 03:05:06 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:35:06 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Music Piracy and Terrorism Linked By Interpol In-Reply-To: <64771.213.187.170.114.1058294977.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030716213506.C83D328DA81@mail.sarai.net> Dear all, I thought this would be of interest to all those on this list who have a curisoity about the everyday life of intellectual property. We (the Raqs Media Collective) have been on an artists residency in Oslo for the past two weeks, and in the course of our forays into the city, have often walked into the Gronland district of Oslo. home to many migrants from South Asia, (mainly from Pakistan, but also from India and Sri Lanka). Of course, as in any other such neighbourhood, anywhere in the world, you can walk into shops that sell and rent dvd's, cd's and video tapes of the latest hindi film, and the latest music. We saw copies of dvd's of 'Bhoot' and 'Supari' for sale, as well as ancient films from the fifites. The material arrayed for sale displayed a healthy range of various shades of legality. However, if you read the article below, you would no doubt expect the little shop in Oslo's Gronland and of course the arcades in Delhi's Palika Bazaar, as well as the pavement shops in Sarojini Nagar and Janpath that sell variations on the Benetton or Gap label to be the subject of search and destroy anti terrorist operations. If you want to know why, read the following article, which appeared in today�s INDIAN EXPRESS Some of us always expected the neat dovetailing of the disocourses of intellectual property, national security and the 'war against terrorism', but I did not expect it to be stated with such clarity. But then, power can be just as surprising as it can be predictable. What is surprising is just how predictable it can be. cheers Shuddha ______________________________________________ Music piracy used for terror financing: Interpol Press Trust of India/ Associated Press http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=23082 The Indian Express, July 16,2003 Paris, July 16: The head of Interpol on Wednesday called for a global crackdown on software and music piracy, saying the illicit proceeds help finance al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terrorist networks. The international police agency's secretary-general, Ronald K. Noble, urged governments and law enforcement agencies to treat such crimes as a priority, saying in a statement, "it is becoming the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups." � The statement was issued on Wednesday ahead of a speech on the subject that Noble was to give in Washington to the House of Representatives' committee on international relations. "There are enough examples now of the funding of terrorist groups in this way for us to worry about the threat to public safety," Noble said. "We must take preventative measures now." An Interpol document to be presented in Washington later in the day said that a wide range of terrorist groups have profited from the production or sale of counterfeit goods, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Chechen separatists, ethnic Albanian extremists in Kosovo and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the statement said. Noble called for stepped-up efforts to trace the proceeds of pirated CDs, DVDs, computer software, and counterfeit clothing and cigarettes. Interpol, based in Lyon, France, coordinates information-sharing among police forces in 181 countries. -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Jul 17 03:05:11 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 23:35:11 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] The new information ecosystem: cultures of anarchy and closure] Message-ID: <61377.213.187.170.114.1058391311.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> opendemocracy | 26 - 6 - 2003 http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=8&debateId=101&articleId=1319 Part 1: The new information ecosystem: cultures of anarchy and closure Siva Vaidhyanathan [ Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the forthcoming The Anarchist in the Library and a true scholar of the internet age, presents a compelling, five-part panorama of the implications of electronic peer-to-peer networks for culture, science, security, and globalisation. His provocative argument registers peer-to-peer as a key site of contest over freedom and control of information. ] The rise of electronic peer-to-peer networks has thrown global entertainment industries into panic mode. They have been clamouring for more expansive controls over personal computers and corporate and university networks. They have proposed radical re-engineering of basic and generally open communicative technologies. And they have complained quite loudly - often with specious data and harsh tones that have had counterproductive public relations results - about the extent of their plight. But the future of entertainment is only a small part of the story. In many areas of communication, social relations, cultural regulation, and political activity, peer-to-peer models of communication have grown in influence and altered the terms of exchange. What is at stake? This is the story of clashing ideologies: information anarchy and information oligarchy. They feed off of each other dialectically. Oligarchy justifies itself through "moral panics" over the potential effects of anarchy. And anarchy justifies itself by reacting to the trends toward oligarchy. The actors who are promoting information anarchy include libertarians, librarians, hackers, terrorists, religious zealots, and anti-globalisation activists. The actors who push information oligarchy include major transnational corporations, the World Trade Organisation, and the governments of the United States of America and the Peoples' Republic of China. Rapidly, these ideologies are remaking our information ecosystem. And those of us uncomfortable with either vision, and who value what we might call "information justice", increasingly find fault and frustration with the ways our media, cultural, information and political systems are changing. The most interesting thing about these challenges and battles is that we can observe how ideologies alter our worlds. Ideologies are, to use a phrase from Pierre Bourdieu, "structuring structures". Ideologies are lenses, ways of thinking and seeing, that guide our perceptions and habits. They are permeable and malleable. They are not determinative. But they make a difference in the judgments we make and the habits we develop. In recent years we have seen the rise of anarchy as a relevant ideology in many areas of life. Our ideologies affect the technologies we choose to adopt. And using certain technologies can alter our ideologies. Anarchy is not just a function of small political groups and marginal information technologies any more. Anarchy matters. This is more than a battle of ideologies. It is also the story of specific battles. There are dozens of examples of recent and current conflicts that arose out of efforts to control the flows of information: * The story of the "Locust Man," an imprisoned dissident democratic activist in China who distributed political messages by attaching them to the backs of locusts. * The ordeal of the public library in Arlington, Virginia, at which two of the hijackers of 11 September 2001 used public terminals in the days preceding their attack. An increasing number of American librarians have had to endure federal law enforcement agencies asking them to violate their code of ethics and their patrons' privacy since this incident. * The controversy over the complaint that some Canadian women can no longer get tested for genes that indicate a predisposition for breast cancer because an American company has patented those genes and charges too much for the test. Through such incidents, we can examine the following issues: * The battle to control democratic sources of information such as public libraries, which are suddenly considered dens of terrorism and pornography. Libraries are under attack through technological mandates and legal restrictions. * Efforts to radically re-engineer the personal computers and networks to eliminate the very power and adaptability that makes these machines valuable. * The cultural implications of allowing fans and creators worldwide sample cultural products at no marginal costs through peer-to-peer computer networks. * Futile attempts to restrict the use and distribution of powerful encryption technology out of fear that criminals and terrorists will evade surveillance. * Commercial and governmental efforts to regulate science and mathematics, including control over the human genome. * Attempts to stifle the activities of political dissidents and religious groups. * The information policy implications of recent United States policies including the USA Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, and the Department of Homeland Security. This essay is the first of a series for openDemocracy that will consider these battles for control of information. This introductory piece will examine the proliferation of peer-to-peer systems. The nature of peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer electronic networks such as Napster, KaZaa, and Gnutella, solve two communicative problems and create two more. The first problem is somewhat trivial. Where do we find a convenient index to files on other people's hard drives? Or, in the case of Napster founder Sean Fanning, a Boston-area university student, how can I find music on other people's computers without asking them to expose themselves to threats by copyright holders? The second problem is more substantial. How do we exploit two of the great underused resources of the digital age: surplus storage space and surplus processing power? More significantly, how do we do this in a way that is effectively anonymous and simple? Fundamentally, peer-to-peer file-sharing systems such as KaZaa, Gnutella, Freenet, and the dearly-departed Napster attempt to recapture or at least simulate the structure and function of the original internet, when all clients were servers and all servers were clients. This original vision of the internet, call it Internet 1.0, arose in the 1970s and devolved around 1994 with the rise of ISPs and dynamic Internet Protocol (IP) numbers. The handful of netizens of Internet 1.0 worked with mainframe computers linked to each other through the Domain Name System (DNS), which helped direct packets of data to the proper destination. Each sender and each destination had a discreet and constant IP number that identified it to the network hubs. But as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) proliferated in the mid-1990s and connected millions of personal computers to networks for only several minutes or hours at a time, it became clear that rotating and re-using IP numbers would allow many more users to share the internet. Thus began Internet 2.0, in which increasingly personal computers allowed their users to receive and consume information, but allowed limited ability to donate to the system. This extension of the network cut off personal computers from the server business. Most users donated information only through e-mail. And it became clear that while the internet once seemed like a grand bazaar of homemade goods and interesting (albeit often frightening) texts generated through community dynamics, it would soon seem more like a shopping mall than a library or bazaar. Two new problems Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is a set of protocols that allow users to open up part of their private content to public inspection, and thus, copying. In the digital world, one cannot access a file without making a copy of it. From this fact arose the first peer-to-peer problem: there is no way to enforce scarcity on these systems. The popularity and common uses of these protocols produce massive anxiety within the industries that rely on artificial scarcity to generate market predictability. The second problem is less well understood because there is no special interest constituency complaining about it. So states have stepped up to take the lead in confronting it. That problem is irresponsibility. Because most of what happens over peer-to-peer networks is relatively anonymous, servers and clients are not responsible for the ramifications of their communicative acts. Using widely available forms of encryption or networks that assure privacy, one may traffic in illicit material such as child pornography with almost no fear. In many places in the world, the availability of adult pornography or racist speech through peer-to-peer systems undermines a decade of efforts to cleanse the more visible and therefore vulnerable World Wide Web. This second problem is actually a solution to another communicative problem that exists primarily in illiberal communicative contexts. Many of the same states that hope to quash pornography also want to quash the speech and organisational communications of democratic activists. So the very existence of these communicative technologies creates moral panics throughout the illiberal world as well as the liberal world. While some worry about the erosion of commerce, others worry about the erosion of power. And the same technologies that liberal societies would use to protect commerce might find more effective uses in Burma or China. Listening to Napster But most of the popular discussion about the rise and effects of peer-to-peer technology has read like a sports story: who is winning and who is losing? Some has read like a crime story: how do we stop this thievery? I am more interested in looking at peer-to-peer communication in its most general sense. How do we explain the peer-to-peer phenomenon? How do we get beyond the sports story or the crime story? Peer-to-peer communication is unmediated, uncensorable, and virtually direct. It might occur between two computers sitting on different continents. It might occur across a fence in a neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe. What we are hearing when we listen to peer-to-peer systems are "bruits publics", or public noises - not the reasonable, responsible give and take of the bourgeois public sphere. This is very old. What we call 'p2p' communicative networks actually reflect and amplify - revise and extend - an old ideology or cultural habit. Electronic peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella merely simulates other, more familiar forms of unmediated, uncensorable, irresponsible, troublesome speech; for example, anti-royal gossip before the French Revolution, trading cassette tapes among youth subcultures such as punk or rap, or the distribution of illicit Islamist cassette tapes through the streets and bazaars of Cairo. Certain sectors of modern society have evolved with and through the ideology of peer-to-peer. Academic culture and science rely on an ideal of raw, open criticism: peer-to-peer review, one might call it. The difference, of course, is that academia and science generally require a licensing procedure to achieve admission to the system. The Free Software movement is the best example of what legal theorist Yochai Benkler calls "peer production", but what we might as well, for the sake of cuteness and consistency, call "peer-to-peer production". This form of speech has value. But it has different value in different contexts. And while peer-to-peer communication has an ancient and important, although under-documented, role, we are clearly seeing both an amplification and a globalisation of these processes. That means that what used to occur only across fences or on park benches now happens between and among members of the Chinese diaspora who might be in Vancouver and Singapore, Shanghai and Barcelona. As cultural groups disperse and reify their identities, they rely more and more on the portable elements of their collective culture which are widely available through electronic means. The clampdown strategy Several technological innovations have enabled this amplification and globalisation of peer-to-peer communication: * The protocols that makeup the internet (i.e. TCP/IP) and the relative openness of networks that make up the internet. * The modularity, customisability, portability, and inexpense of the personal computer. * The openness, customisability, and insecurity of the major personal computer operating systems. * The openness, insecurity, and portability of the digital content itself. Understandably, states and corporations that wish to impede peer-to-peer communication have been focusing on these factors. These are, of course, the very characteristics of computers and the internet that have driven this remarkable - almost revolutionary - adoption of them in the past decade. These are the sites of the battle. States and media corporations wish to: * Monitor and regulate every detail of communication and shift liability and regulatory responsibility to the Internet Service Providers. * Redesign the protocols that run the internet. * Neuter the customisability of the personal computer and other digital devices. * Impose "security" on the operating systems so that they might enable "trust" between a content company and its otherwise untrustworthy users. These efforts involve both public and private intervention, standard setting by states and private actors. The United States Congress, the Federal Communication Commission, the Motion Picture Association of America, Microsoft and Intel have all been involved in efforts to radically redesign our communicative technologies along these lines. And they are appealing for complementary legal and technical interventions by the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. These moves would create Internet 3.0, although it would not actually look like the internet at all. It would not be open and customisable. Content - and thus culture - would not be adaptable and malleable. And what small measures of privacy these networks now afford would evaporate. These are the dangers that Lawrence Lessig warned us about in 1998 in his seminal work Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Only now are we coming to understand that Lessig was right. These regulatory efforts have sparked an arms race. The very suggestion of such radical solutions generated immediate reactions by those who support anarchistic electronic communication. Every time a regime rolls out a new form of technological control, some group of hackers or "hacktivists" break through it or evade it in a matter of weeks. The only people who really adhere to these controls are those not technologically proficient: most of the world. It might surprise casual observers of these battles that the important conflicts are not happening in court. The Napster case had some interesting rhetorical nuggets. But basically this was classic contributory infringement by a commercial service. KaZaa is a bit more interesting because it is a distributed company with assets under a series of jurisdictions and a technology that limits its ability to regulate what its clients do. KaZaa might collapse and only fully distributed, voluntary networks might remain: namely, Gnutella and Freenet. The real conflicts will be in the devices, the networks, and the media products themselves. And there seems to be few areas of healthy public discussion or critique about the relationships between technology and culture. Meanwhile, the strategies and structures that limit peer-to-peer communication also quash dissent, activism, and organisation in illiberal contexts - that is, oppressive, totalitarian and authoritarian states. And for this reason, p2p systems like Freenet - encrypted, completely anonymous, and unquenchable - are essential tools for democratic activists in places like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma and China. The lessons for the public sphere Where there is no rich, healthy public sphere we should support anarchistic communicative techniques. Where there is a rich, healthy public sphere, we must take an honest, unromantic account of the costs of such anarchy. And through public spheres we should correct for the excesses of communicative anarchy. Still, we must recognise that poor, sickly, fragile public spheres are more common than rich, healthy public spheres. And the battles at play over privacy, security, surveillance, censorship and intellectual property in the United States right now will determine whether we will count the world's oldest democracy as sickly or healthy. Anarchy is radical democracy. But it is not the best form of democracy. But as a set of tools, anarchy can be an essential antidote to tyranny. o o o opendemocracy | 10 - 7 - 2003 http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-101-1348.jsp Part 2: 'Pro-gumbo': culture as anarchy Siva Vaidhyanathan In much of the American South before the Civil War, drums were illegal. Slaveholders were aware of the West African traditions of "talking instruments" and tried everything within their means to stifle free, open, unmediated communication across distances. Drums could signal insurrection. And drums could conjure collective memories of a time of freedom. Mostly, slaveholders realised that to subjugate masses of people, they had to alienate them from their culture as much as possible. They had to strand them in a strange land and try to make that land seem stranger than it was. They had to strictly regulate slave culture. They had to outlaw slave literacy. They had to commit social and cultural homicide to keep otherwise free people from rising up and taking charge of their own bodies. That the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean still set the time for American culture speaks to the determination and courage of African American slaves. The slaveholders outlawed the tools. But they could not stop the beat (see Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans and Christopher Small, Music of the Common Tongue) That the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean still set the time for American culture speaks to the determination and courage of African American slaves. The slaveholders outlawed the tools. But they could not stop the beat. As oligarchic forces such as global entertainment conglomerates strive to restrict certain tools that they assume threaten their livelihood, they should consider that throughout the history of communication, people have managed to use and adapt technologies in surprising and resilient ways. Once in a while, a set of communicative technologies offers revolutionary potential: peer-to-peer networks do just that. They are part of a collection of technologies - including cassette audio tapes, video tapes, recordable compact discs, video discs, home computers, the internet, and jet airplanes - that link diasporic communities and remake nations. They empower artists in new ways and connect communities of fans. The battle to control these cultural flows says much about the anxieties and unsteadiness of the power structures that had hoped to exploit cultural globalisation. It also teaches us much about the nature of culture itself. Global culture by the download A couple of years ago, a journalist friend of mine put me in contact with a gentleman who does consulting work for the World Bank. This gentleman called me to see if I was interested in participating in a meeting in New York that June which would enable cultural ministers from a handful of African countries - including Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa - to meet leaders from the American music industry. The goal was to brainstorm about how African musicians might exploit digital music distribution systems to market and deliver their songs directly to diasporic communities. The battle to control these cultural flows says much about the anxieties and unsteadiness of the power structures that had hoped to exploit cultural globalisation. It also teaches us much about the nature of culture itself. He had no way of knowing what I thought of this idea. I had yet to publish anything on the subject. So my opinions were not widely known. So he was not quite prepared for my reaction. "Why do they need record companies?" I asked. "The artists can do it all themselves for less than $10,000." He was stunned. Having a World Bank perspective on development, he assumed that the artists of the developing world would need and welcome the giant helping hand of Bertelsmann or AOL Time Warner. So he responded with an appeal to technological expertise. The artists would need the major labels, he said, because the labels are working on incorporating digital rights management software into digital music files. Without watermarking or copy-protection features, the artists would just be giving their music away. Then I explained to him that it was too late for all that. The power of digitisation and networking had beaten him and the record companies to it. I didn't even touch the subject of the complications inherent in asking African musicians - who are often dissidents - to work with government culture ministers. I just made it seem like he had missed a technological moment. He had the best of intentions. But he had not considered that certain technological changes had fostered a new ideological movement as well. And that these trends might change the nature of global music and creativity. All music will be 'world music' One of the great unanswered questions is how file sharing and MP3 compression will affect the distribution of what music corporations call "world music", tunes from non-English-speaking nations, offering rhythms that seem fresh to Europeans and Americans who have grown up and old on the driving four-four beat of rock-and-roll. Now, rhymes and rhythms from all corners of the Earth are available in malleable form at low cost to curious artists everywhere. Peer-to-peer has gone global. Of course, there are some big economic and technological hurdles to overcome before it can affect all cultural traditions equally. As the differences narrow, how will the availability of a vast and already stunningly diverse library of sounds change creativity and commerce? Won't all music be "world music?" The riches of ephemera On any given day, on any peer-to-peer file sharing system, one can find the most obscure and rare items. I have downloaded some of Malcolm X's speeches, Reggae remixes of Biggie Smalls' hits, various club dance mixes of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and long lost Richard Pryor comedy bits that were only released on vinyl by a long-defunct company. Through nation-specific and general "world music" chat rooms on the now-defunct Napster, I had been able to find Tamil film songs, Carnatic classical music, and pop stuff from Asian Dub Foundation, Ali Farka Toure, Orisha, and Youssou N'Dour. The most interesting and entertaining phenomena of the MP3-peerto-peer is the availability of "mashes" - new compositions created by combining the rhythm tracks of one song and the vocal track of another. (The best example of a popular "mash", currently, is Genie's Revenge, a combination of vocals by Christina Aguilera and a guitar riff by the Strokes). Anxious ethnomusicology This is a phenomenon that ethnomusicologists are just starting to consider. During the 1980s and 1990s, anthropologist Steven Feld raised some serious questions about the future of global cultural diversity as "world music" gained market share and generated interest among western producers and labels. Feld published some of his thoughts as an article called A Sweet Lullaby for World Music. The article traces the development of marketing efforts for this new genre of "world music", which meant anything from drum beats from Mali to the ambient sounds of lemurs in Madagascar. Feld expressed concern early on the very term "world music" made some forms of music distinct from what academics and music industry figures call "music". Since the rise of the world music genre as a commercial factor, music scholarship has been asking the question, "how has difference fared in the new gumbo?" Feld wrote that recent world music scholarship has revealed the "uneven rewards, unsettling representations, and complexly entangled desires that lie underneath the commercial rhetoric of global connection, that is, the rhetoric of 'free' flow and 'greater' access." "Free flow" is a buzzword in north-south communication policy debates. Stemming from 1970s arguments in Unesco forums, the United States argued that the world community should establish standards that would encourage the free flow of information across borders, ostensibly to spread democracy and ensure civil rights. Many oppressive states - chiefly India under Indira Gandhi - argued that the doctrine of "free flow" was merely a cover for what we now call the neoliberal agenda: sweetening American corporate expansion by dusting it with the sugar of enlightenment principles. The "free-flow" vs. "cultural imperialism" argument (which has since been supplemented by another approach that emphasises the complex uses to which all audiences put cultural elements) has unfortunately limited our vision and stifled discussions about what we might do to encourage freedom and the positive externalities of cultural flow while limiting the oppressive and exploitative externalities of the spread of American and European modes of cultural production and distribution. Feld also outlined the reaction to scholarship that embraced this "cultural imperialism" model. In contrast to those who raise concerns about the spread of new loud noises, "celebratory" scholarship emphasised the use and re-use of elements of American and European musical forms in the emerging pop sounds flowing from the developing world. It also celebrated the new market success that artists from the developing world were achieving. This scholarship emphasised fluid cultural identities and predicted an eventual equilibrium of the power differences in the world music industry. This school, which I subscribe to, downplays the influence of hegemony and underlines the potential creative and democratic power of sharing. Instead of "celebratory", I prefer the term "pro-gumbo". Steven Feld, who belongs to that group of scholars who utilise what he calls "anxious narratives", sees little possibility for resisting the commodification of ethnicity and musical styles. For the anxious, "global" becomes "displaced"; "emerging" become "exploited"; "cultural conversations" become "white noise". To make his point that we should not ignore the effects of the cultural violence that is primitivism, Feld writes, "The advertisement of this democratic and liberal vision for world music embodies an idealism about free-flows, sharing, and choice. But it masks the reality that visibility in product choice is directly related to sales volume, profitability, and stardom." Even though I celebrate sharing, free flows, and gumbo, I must concede the gravity of Feld's concerns. But my question now is: how does peer-to-peer change these issues? Feld is really writing about the anxieties of ethnomusicologists. He is not so concerned with the effects on the actual music and how it works in the lives of musicians and fans: "In the end, no matter how inspiring the musical creation, no matter how affirming its participatory dimension, the existence and success of world music returns to one of globalization's basic economic clichés: the drive for more and more markets and market niches. In the cases here, we see how the worlds of small (UNESCO and Auvidis) and large (Sony) and major independent (ECM) music owners and distributors can come into unexpected interaction. We see how production can proceed from the acquisition of a faraway cheap inspiration and labor. We see how exotic Euromorphs can be marketed through newly layered tropes, like green enviroprimitivism, or spiritual new age avant-garde romanticism. We see how what is produced has a place in a larger industrial music zone of commodity intensification, in this case artistic encounters with indigeneity, as made over in popular Western styles. In all, we see how world music participates in shaping a kind of consumer-friendly multiculturalism, one that follows the market logic of expansion and consolidation." The peer-to-peer solution Perhaps the spread of peer-to-peer libraries should allay the concerns of anxious critics. Peer-to-peer music distribution - so far - has been all about decorporatisation and deregulation. Music corporations do not control the flow, prices, or terms of access anymore. Music distribution has lower barriers of entry than ever before, and offers the potential of direct, communal marketing and creolisation. We should acknowledge some key concepts about cultural globalisation: * It's happening, but it's rolling out in ways that are alarming to those who hoped to profit the most from it. * The prices and profits of globalisation are falling unevenly and unpredictably. * Culture is not zero-sum. Using something does not prevent someone else from using it, and does not degrade its value. In fact, it might enhance it. Culture is anarchistic We often mistake the collection of end-products of culture - the symphonies and operas, novels and poems - that have survived the rigorous peer review of markets and critics as the culture itself. Culture is anarchistic if it is alive at all. It grows up from the common, everyday interactions among humans who share a condition or a set of common symbols and experiences. We often mistake the collection of end-products of culture - the symphonies and operas, novels and poems - that have survived the rigorous peer review of markets and critics as the culture itself. Culture is not the sum of its products. It is the process that generates those products. And if it is working properly, culture is radically democratic, vibrant, malleable, surprising, and fun. These two different visions of culture explain much of the difference between the assumptions behind information anarchy and information oligarchy. Anarchists - and many less radical democrats - believe that culture should flow with minimal impediments. Oligarchs, even if they seem politically liberal, favor a top-down approach to culture with massive intervention from powerful institutions such as the state, corporations, universities, or museums. All of these institutions may be used to construct and preserve free flows of culture and information. But all too often they are harnessed to the oligarchic cause, making winners into bigger winners, and thus rigging the cultural market. What Matthew Arnold thinks of P2P In 1867 the English critic Mathew Arnold published a treatise called Culture and Anarchy. The book was an extended argument with the cultural implications of John Stuart Mill's 1859 book On Liberty. Arnold took Mill to task for endorsing a low level of cultural regulation. Culture, to Arnold, was all the good stuff that cultural authorities such as himself said it was. And culture, in the Arnoldian sense, was preferable - was in fact and antidote to - anarchy. Samuel Huntington expresses this same oligarchic theory of culture in his simplistic yet influential book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington sees cultures as grounded on certain immutable foundations. He sees the emphasis on cultural transmission, flu From paivakil at yahoo.co.in Thu Jul 17 23:22:34 2003 From: paivakil at yahoo.co.in (Mahesh T. Pai) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 23:22:34 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] IT@School - food for thought Message-ID: <20030717175234.GA2087@nandini> Hi!! all. This is my first post to the list. Have been lurking for some time. Missed out this one till late in the day. Refer to today's (17 July, 2003) Malayalam daily, the "Mathrubhumi", (pg 11 in Cochin edition). Here is a summarized rough translation for non-malayalees:- IT project: Antony respects suggestion by VS, Soopy opposes. By B. Rameshkumar Education minister expressed dissatisfaction over action taken by the chief minister in postponing meeting on the ground that the objections raised by the leader of opposition are very serious. The minister had to meet the leader of opposition at his official residence to comply with the chief minister's directions These incidents relate to the IT at SCHOOL project. The law department also has raised certain objections. The general council of the project was scheduled to meet on 11th. Apart from the Chief Minister, secretaries and ministers of education, industry, IT, finance, and local administration arrived for the meet. The leader of opposition gave a detailed note to the Chief Minister 2 hours before the meet pointing out that there are serious traps in the memoranda of understanding proposed to be signed. The CM arrived at the meet with this note. The CM directed that there points raised in the note are serious, and the education minister should discuss the issue with him (leader of the opposition). He did not take up the agenda. Minister Soopy stated that it is not proper to postpone it in this manner. However, the CM stood his ground that the minister discuss the issue with leader of opposition. In the meanwhile, the IT secretary pointed out that the concerned file has not reached (her). Certain quarters advised the education minister that he need not go and meet the leader of opposition. But, Soopy agreed to honour the promise made to the general council by the CM. He talked with Achutanandan for one hour on Tuesday night. He (VS Achutanandan) stood firm on the doubts and concerns raised by him. One of allegations raised by Achutanandan relate to the 'project siksha' of Microsoft which is part of the IT at SCHOOL. The project is worth 10 crore rupees. It was made clear in the agenda note given to the general body that an IT academy will be set up in 3000 Square feet space and and teachers will be trained (here) to use Microsoft products. However, the leader of opposition pointed out that it is made clear in the agenda note that the 3000 sq. ft. space in Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, which would fetch rent of Rupees 6,84,000 is to be handed over to Microsoft for mere one rupee. He also stated that due to the training, the teachers will be able to use only Microsoft's products. He also questioned the direction issued to the DPI (Director of public Instruction) to issue orders to the schools informing them (to?) purchase (of?) necessary software. Achutanandan also demanded in his note to the CM to drop the move to hand over execution of the IT at SCHOOL project to a private concern for next 30 years. At the same time, authorities of IT at SCHOOL informed that there is no block to use of 'swatantra' software in the project. But the problem is that there would be no training support available. They also point out that the government has directed that there shall not be any new appointments for the training. (Note:- a) The words in brackets are added by me, to make the context clear b) One US$ = approx 48 Indian Rupees. c) Details of the IT at School project can be had from :- http://keralaeducation.org. There was some opposition to the project from the free software users' group - see http://symonds.net/~fsug-kochi -- +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M., 'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road, Ernakulam, Cochin-682018, Kerala, India. http://in.geocities.com/paivakil +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ From alforum at vsnl.net Fri Jul 18 10:20:10 2003 From: alforum at vsnl.net (alforum at vsnl.net) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 23:50:10 -0500 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Osama Bill Laden Message-ID: <200307180450.h6I4oAQ11741@webmail2.vsnl.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030717/1a53c59c/attachment.pl From jyotsna_b at hotmail.com Sat Jul 19 18:20:20 2003 From: jyotsna_b at hotmail.com (jyotsna balakrishnan) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 18:20:20 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bob Dylan-A Plagiarist? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030719/ebac03d2/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Sun Jul 20 03:24:35 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (shuddha at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 23:54:35 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] new handbook on Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property] Message-ID: <62475.213.187.170.114.1058651675.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Dear All, I m forwarding here a post sent by Darius Cuplinskas on to the Bytes for All list-It is about a new hand book on traditional knowledge and intellectual property. I thought that it might be of interest to people here. cheers Shuddha --------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [bytesforall_readers] new handbook on Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property From: "Darius Cuplinskas" Date: Fri, July 18, 2003 11:46 am To: "BytesForAll" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- A new handbook on traditional/indigenous knowledge has just been published. Below is a brief description: -------------- Traditional knowledge holders often stand outside the fold of intellectual property rights and are negatively affected by them. The AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science] Science and Human Rights Program has created a handbook that makes intellectual property issues and protection options more understandable and readily available for traditional knowledge holders, human rights NGOs, and legal professionals. Its goal is to help local communities understand and identify potential protection mechanisms already present in the current intellectual property rights regime that may be applied to their knowledge. For communities that do not wish to participate in the IP regime, it offers suggestions and options to avoid inappropriate claims on their knowledge by others. In addition to introducing intellectual property concepts, this handbook contains a series of exercises to help the user to identify and classify types of knowledge, cultural aspects, and community goals related to specific knowledge claims. Through a series of exercises, it is possible for traditional knowledge holders to identify whether or not specific intellectual property protection options are relevant and/or appropriate for their knowledge. An electronic version of the handbook in PDF format is now available for download at: http://shr.aaas.org/tek/handbook/ Print copies will be available in the coming weeks for a nominal fee to cover printing and shipping charges. Check the handbook web site (above) for availability and ordering information. For more information, contact Stephen Hansen at shansen at aaas.org Stephen A. Hansen Project Director Science & Intellectual Property in the Public Interest (SIPPI) American Association for the Advancement of Science 1200 New York Ave., NW Washington, DC 20005 USA Tel: (202) 326-6796 Fax: (202) 289-4950 email: shansen at aaas.org WWW: http://shr.aaas.org WWW: http://sippi.aaas.org ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Breakthrough Natural Health Specialties at VitaminBoost.com $20 to $40 Oral Sprays for Fast Results and Greater Absorption. http://www.challengerone.com/t/l.asp?cid=2880 http://us.click.yahoo.com/3oMABA/muYGAA/ySSFAA/C7EolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: bytesforall_readers-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From jeebesh at sarai.net Sun Jul 20 03:35:54 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 00:05:54 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Plans for a World Forum on Communication Rights From: Message-ID: <62665.213.187.170.114.1058652354.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Could be of Interest... ---------------------------- Subject: Plans for a World Forum on Communication Rights From: "geert lovink" Date: Tue, July 15, 2003 2:36 am To: "Nettime-l" -------------------------------------------------------- (This could be of interest for nettimers. The Forum Organizing Group has not yet done a lot so there's still a lot of room left to shape it. If you want to join, please contact one of the organizers. /geert) World Forum on Communication Rights This introduces a proposal to hold a one-day World Forum on Communication Rights alongside the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on December 11 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland. The CRIS campaign (Communication Rights in the Information Society: www.crisinfo.org) is launching the initiative as a collaborative event, and is actively building a broader partnership. 1. The Rationale The purpose of the Forum is specific. In the context of human rights in general, it focuses on information and communication rights issues that surround the emergence of an information society. These are not limited to concerns regarding the 'digital divide' and access to ICTs; but draw on a more profound understanding of the role of information and communication in society and current dynamics and trends. They encompass areas such as the public domain and intellectual property rights, the public sphere and media and communication, and the commercialisation and closure of the Internet. The WSIS itself is constrained in the manner and depth to which such issues can be addressed. Some countries and corporate interests have already demonstrated their determination to prevent certain matters from reaching the agenda. And many issues are the domain of existing international organisations and entities, and these are reluctant to cede territory to the WSIS. Yet it is essential that communication rights in the information society be considered as a coherent, and interrelated, set of concerns. Indeed, in all likelihood it is the extent to which rights are implanted and firmly fixed within the process of creating an information society that will determine which kind of information society emerges, how the benefits will be realised, and who will reap them. The event comprises a forum to explore these and to do something about them. It traces its lineage (as does the CRIS campaign itself) not through the WSIS process per se, but in the mobilisation of civil society in recent years around global human rights, communication and development issues. 2. Goals The outcomes of the Forum are expected to be threefold: A. A Portrayal of Communication Rights Globally: To explore and define the dimensions of information and communication rights that must underpin any claim of an information society to enrich the lives of all people, by portraying the denial of these rights in different contexts using concrete examples and analyses, and demonstrating novel examples of such rights being secured. B. A 'Declaration on Communication Rights in the Information Society': To formulate together and agree a succinct statement, in comprehensible language, that: Notes existing human rights relating to information and communication; Sets down the conditions and environment necessary for people to exercise these, in practice; Explores obstacles to achieving such an environment, identifying priority areas for intervention. C. A Set of Actions: To engage multi-partner participation in a set of voluntary collaborative actions to implement such rights in a manner meaningful to people in their everyday lives, and to define appropriate follow-up. These will comprise targeted actions, each contributing to communication rights in the context of the information society, and that in practice are beyond the scope of the WSIS Summit. They might include for instance alternatives to intellectual property rights, promotion of open source software, innovation in governance and regulation, grass-roots technologies, or new fund-raising mechanisms. 3. Modalities The Forum is an open event. It welcomes those among civil society, activists, NGOs, agencies, governments, intergovernmental organisations and the private sector who accept the need to address communication rights in the information society and who want to work together to achieve these goals. It will have a duration of one day, and will take place alongside the first WSIS Summit in December 2003 in Palexpo. The provisional date is December the 11th, mid way through the three day Summit. 4. Link to Other Events Links will be established with other events surrounding the WSIS, held within Palexpo as well as externally bringing together grass-roots and community activists and organisations. An important aspect of the Forum will be to build bridges between these and others within the WSIS as a whole seeking to cooperate on rights issues, and to bring forward radical but realistic proposals for action. CRIS will also work with others to organise workshops, seminars or other events around the WSIS Summit, aimed at feeding into the Forum, and may establish live interactive links globally. Preparations for all three objectives will be extensive and are underway. A. The portrayal of the situation and needs of communication rights in different regions will be primed through a series of national and regional Workshops and other events. Using a common methodology, the aim is to explore the realities for communities in different regions in terms of rights or the absence of them, the impact on their capacity to engage effectively with the information society, and innovative solutions from communities and activists. Such workshops are currently being discussed with partners, and others are being sought. B. A first draft of the Declaration on Communication Rights will be prepared by the Forum Organising Group by July 2003. It will then be open to a period of discussion and debate, electronically, at civil society and other events and through targeted consultations. The final text agreed for the Forum will thereafter seek ongoing endorsement from a wide range of actors. This Declaration is not intended as a formal or legal statement, but as a basic set of agreed principles that can form a platform for organisation and mobilisation. C. The set of concrete actions initiated at the Forum need careful and extensive preparation and coordination with others. A first step is to identify potential projects, each to be organised as collaborations, going beyond the current status quo in conventional information society thought, that contribute to information and communication rights, and yet are realistic in terms of resources and outcomes. We are convinced that huge financial investment is not a prerequisite of progress, if the will is there to innovate in regulation, governance and new funding mechanisms. Donor agencies, government and indeed private sector are welcome in such actions. Preparations will be pursued alongside existing civil society events during the year, WSIS PrepCom 3, and in dedicated meetings, encounters and communications, thus grounding it within ongoing civil society processes and discourse. CRIS is ready to play its part in organising the event, and is actively seeking collaborators amongst NGOs and civil society, intergovernmental and other agencies, governments and private sector. CRIS is approaching various parties to form a Forum Organising Group. Should you wish to know more please contact: Seán Ó Siochrú sean at nexus.ie Myriam Horngren: mh at wacc.org.uk -- http://www.worldsummit2003.de/en/web/386.htm A first meeting for planning the World Forum on Communication Rights (WFCR) took place on 10 June in London. The attendees discussed a draft concept by Sean O´Siochru from the CRIS campaign. Issues such as media concentration and intellectual property rights are to be adressed, aiming to come to a more comprehensive definition of the right to communicate. The objective is thus to fill the vaccuum of issues which the governmental declarations of the World Summit of Information Society leave out. The first WFCR will be taking place on December 11th at Palexpo, Geneve, half way through the World Summit on Information Society. It is supposed to be a spectacle for press and civil society. But the WFCR will also go beyond WSIS. It will monitor the further development of Communication rights on a regular basis. Further ocasions for this could be WTO and WSF-Meetings in 2004 as well as the Tunis WSIS in 2005. Yet the Programme is only starting to evolve. As a framework, three main approaches have been discussed, looking at the present situation, the principles, and the future tasks of communication rights. Working groups on each thread will be formed during the next weeks as well as a "fog" (a "forum organising group"), which hopefully - as opposed to its title - will bring some light and transparency into the coordination process. Sean's concept paper has already proposed a title for the first panel: "Commuication rights, communication wrongs". A working group will be collecting examples of good and malpractise of communication. A call for inputs will be released soon. Theoretical work will be presented on the second panel. A declaration on Communication Rights will give a definition of a right to communicate in an information society. Work on the text will start soon. The working group on this is encouraged to merge the statements developed by various groups in the preparation process of WSIS. Authors of these statements are invited to participate. The final panel will proceed to more practical agenda setting. The necessary steps to improve communication rights will be dicussed here. This shall be demonstrating the possibilities of an alternative approach towards the information society taking into account communication rights. Jan Schallaböck, London, 10 June 2003. See also: http://www.worldwidewiki.net/wiki/SsrcWorknotes # 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 From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Jul 19 19:51:42 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 19 Jul 2003 19:51:42 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Music Industry Wins 871 Subpoenas Against Internet Users Message-ID: <1058624501.13409.14.camel@mahitilaptop.tara> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92351,00.html WASHINGTON ? The music industry has won at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files (search) on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, U.S. court officials said Friday. The effort represents early steps in the music industry's contentious plan to file civil lawsuits aimed at crippling online piracy. Subpoenas reviewed by The Associated Press show the industry compelling some of the largest Internet providers, such as Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Cable Communications Inc., and some universities to identify names and mailing addresses for users on their networks known online by nicknames such as "fox3j," "soccerdog33," "clover77" or "indepunk74." The Recording Industry Association of America (search) has said it expects to file at least several hundred lawsuits seeking financial damages within the next eight weeks. U.S. copyright laws (search) allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song offered illegally on a person's computer, but the RIAA has said it would be open to settlement proposals from defendants. The campaign comes just weeks after U.S. appeals court rulings requiring Internet providers to readily identify subscribers suspected of illegally sharing music and movie files. The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act permits music companies to force Internet providers to turn over the names of suspected music pirates upon subpoena from any U.S. District Court clerk's office, without a judge's signature required. In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as "representative recordings" of music files available for downloading from these users. The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, previously indicated its lawyers would target Internet users who offer substantial collections of MP3 song files but declined to say how many songs might qualify for a lawsuit. "We would have to look at historic trends, but that is a very high number," said Alan Davidson of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group that has argued against the subpoenas. "It doesn't sound like they're just going after a few big fish." Music fans are fighting back with technology, using new software designed specifically to stymie monitoring of their online activities by the major record labels. A new version of "Kazaa Lite," free software that provides access to the service operated by Sharman Networks Ltd., can prevent anyone from listing all music files on an individual's machine and purports to block scans from Internet addresses believed to be associated with the RIAA. Many of the subpoenas reviewed by the AP identified songs from the same few artists, including Avril Lavigne, Snoop Dogg and Michael Jackson. It was impossible to determine whether industry lawyers were searching the Internet specifically for songs by these artists or whether they were commonly popular among the roughly 60 million users of file-sharing services. The RIAA's subpoenas are so prolific that the U.S. District Court in Washington, already suffering staff shortages, has been forced to reassign employees from elsewhere in the clerk's office to help process paperwork, said Angela Caesar-Mobley, the clerk's operations manager. The RIAA declined to comment on the numbers of subpoenas it issued. "We are identifying substantial infringers and we're going to whatever entity is providing (Internet) service for that potential infringer," said Matt Oppenheim, the group's senior vice president of business and legal affairs. "From there we'll be in a position to begin bringing lawsuits." A spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the clerk's office here was "functioning more like a clearing house, issuing subpoenas for all over the country." Any civil lawsuits would likely be transferred to a different jurisdiction, spokeswoman Karen Redmond said. Verizon, which has fought the RIAA over the subpoenas with continued legal appeals, said it received at least 150 subpoenas during the last two weeks. There were no subpoenas on file sent to AOL Time Warner Inc., the nation's largest Internet provider and also parent company of Warner Music Group. Earthlink Inc., another of the largest Internet providers, said it has received only three new subpoenas. Depaul University in Chicago was among the few colleges that received such subpoenas; the RIAA asked Depaul on July 2 to track down a user known as "anon39023" who was allegedly offering at least eight songs. There was some evidence the threat of an expensive lawsuit was discouraging online music sharing. Nielsen NetRatings, which monitors Internet usage, earlier this week reported a decline for traffic on the Kazaa network of one million users, with similarly large drops across other services. -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From ashish at cscsban.org Sun Jul 20 19:54:58 2003 From: ashish at cscsban.org (ashish at cscsban.org) Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 10:24:58 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Composers and Copyright Message-ID: <29950-220037020142458901@M2W050.mail2web.com> Many of you would have caught the news of Indian film composers meeting with L.K. Advani last week asking for a change in the Copyright Law regarding remixes. (I've reproduced the Mid-Day news item below). I suspect that there's an interesting history to this business of remixes: something we know came here from England (Bally Sagoo et al) in turn borrowing from reggae rhythms: and creating souped up variations of Hindi classics. This was the first time that a form invented by the Indian diaspora has made such inroads, and I wonder just what the history of two-year clause to the amendment to the Copyright Act 52-1-j-iii is? The controversial clause is: "no such sound recording shall be made until the expiration of two calendar years after the end of the year in which the first recording of the work was made". Given the effort to keep all copyright in virtual perpetuity, two years is an astonishing small period for copyright holders to hang on to their rights! Ashish Anti-remix delegation meets Advani By: Narendra Kusnur July 18, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- An eight-member delegation comprising members of the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) and Indian Music Industry (IMI) yesterday met three Union ministers and asked for deletion of Section 52 (1) (j) of the Copyright Act, which could stop the practice of Hindi remixes and cover versions. The delegation met Deputy PM L K Advani, Information & Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi at their offices in Delhi. According to IPRS director-general Sanjay Tandon, Advani assured the delegation that he would ask the Culture and I&B ministries to take suitable steps in that direction. “He described the practice of remixes as shameful, and assured full cooperation in this matter,” Tandon said. Tandon added that Murli Manohar Joshi described remixes as a blot on India’s music culture and said he would even take up the matter with the prime minister. Besides Tandon, the delegation comprised veteran composers Naushad, Khayyam, Anandji and Ravindra Jain, lyricist Hasan Kamaal, V J Lazarus (of Universal Music) and Abhik Mitra (of Saregama HMV). Besides remixes, the issue of audio piracy was also discussed. The music industry is said to have lost Rs 1,800 crore in revenues over the last three years due to remixes and cover versions. The IPRS and IMI have launched a campaign asking for deletion of Section 52 (1) (j), which legitimises the use of literary, musical and underlying works without the owners’ consent and encourages recording popular songs using fresh musicians or singers. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From cha_mathyoo at hotmail.com Tue Jul 22 21:07:58 2003 From: cha_mathyoo at hotmail.com (Mathew M. Chacko) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 21:07:58 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] The Protection of Formats vide .... Copyright ? Message-ID: All, Has anybody read .... Survivor v. Im A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here ??? Would any one know of an argument that the law of copyright extends too long a period of protection for as elusive an "asset" as a format (+ the public interest in reduced protection period for ideas) and therefore that it should be protected (assuming it should be protected) by some other regime ... A law of ideas ?? Has such an argument been advanced ..anywhere ? Articles/ Cases etc ? Mathew Formats for success Saturday April 5, 2003 The Guardian Alex Wade's article (Hey, that's my idea Tuesday, April 1st) detailed the gloomy outlook for television format copyright protection in international law courts. But there is hope. Frapa (Format Recognition and Protection Association) is agitating to have the trade protected under more inclusive copyright laws. In Germany, the North Rhine Westphalian government is leading a push to introduce formal definitions of television formats to the local copyright law. There is a realisation in the US that the business of television formats is growing and needs protecting, just as a decade ago the burgeoning computer software industry needed its intellectual property protected. In the recent US case of Survivor vs I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, the concept of legal protection for formats under copyright law was acknowledged, even if infringement was not proven in that instance. In that judgment some important precedents were introduced, such as the introduction of an overall "look and feel" test of a show's format, as well as defining a particular format by its individual elements. That case restated an important principle of US protection, "even where a television show is made up of entirely stock devices, an original ... organisation ... of such devices can nevertheless be protected, just as it is the original combination of words or notes that leads to a protectable book or song". However, changes in the law are slow and in the meantime Frapa offers mediation. Even fiercely warring individuals see the wisdom of mediation when the alternative is the slow, expensive, unsure legal system. To date, Frapa has had outcomes satisfying to both parties in all but one of its mediations. The format industry needs certainty, so while the law drags its feet Frapa provides fast, reliable solutions. David Lyle Frapa, Cologne ====== 'And they both looked the same.' _________________________________________________________________ Nagesh Kukunoor's back! With 3 Deewarein. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/3deewarein/index.asp Win tickets here. From sudhir_krishnaswamy at vsnl.net Wed Jul 23 11:51:41 2003 From: sudhir_krishnaswamy at vsnl.net (Sudhir Krishnaswamy) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 11:51:41 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Composers and Copyright References: <29950-220037020142458901@M2W050.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <013d01c350ed$b66eece0$c79741db@comp1> Dear Ashish For those [like me] who had not seen the news item you posted, it is intriguing to see how the campaign for deleting s 52 (1) (j) proceeds. Provisions allowing for version recordings and remixes are not unique to Indian copyright law though the two year rule may be. I am not aware if there are any diasporic interests which influenced the drafting of this clause. I was very interested in whether a cultural rather than an economic case can be made against the version recording industry. This industry has no doubt produced a variable quality of products that caters to a lower price point on the music market [a-la T-Series]. Though it would be difficult to make an argument that this industry could claim a strong contribution to 'cultural creativity' in Indian music there are 'original' contributions in the film world that would be similarly placed. I am sure that those more familiar with the contours and history of the Indian music industry can help us with identifying how we may assess the claim that the ' cultural creativity' in 'original' hindi movie song is discouraged by the version recording industry. Best Sudhir ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 7:54 PM Subject: [Commons-Law] Composers and Copyright Many of you would have caught the news of Indian film composers meeting with L.K. Advani last week asking for a change in the Copyright Law regarding remixes. (I've reproduced the Mid-Day news item below). I suspect that there's an interesting history to this business of remixes: something we know came here from England (Bally Sagoo et al) in turn borrowing from reggae rhythms: and creating souped up variations of Hindi classics. This was the first time that a form invented by the Indian diaspora has made such inroads, and I wonder just what the history of two-year clause to the amendment to the Copyright Act 52-1-j-iii is? The controversial clause is: "no such sound recording shall be made until the expiration of two calendar years after the end of the year in which the first recording of the work was made". Given the effort to keep all copyright in virtual perpetuity, two years is an astonishing small period for copyright holders to hang on to their rights! Ashish Anti-remix delegation meets Advani By: Narendra Kusnur July 18, 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- An eight-member delegation comprising members of the Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) and Indian Music Industry (IMI) yesterday met three Union ministers and asked for deletion of Section 52 (1) (j) of the Copyright Act, which could stop the practice of Hindi remixes and cover versions. The delegation met Deputy PM L K Advani, Information & Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi at their offices in Delhi. According to IPRS director-general Sanjay Tandon, Advani assured the delegation that he would ask the Culture and I&B ministries to take suitable steps in that direction. "He described the practice of remixes as shameful, and assured full cooperation in this matter," Tandon said. Tandon added that Murli Manohar Joshi described remixes as a blot on India's music culture and said he would even take up the matter with the prime minister. Besides Tandon, the delegation comprised veteran composers Naushad, Khayyam, Anandji and Ravindra Jain, lyricist Hasan Kamaal, V J Lazarus (of Universal Music) and Abhik Mitra (of Saregama HMV). Besides remixes, the issue of audio piracy was also discussed. The music industry is said to have lost Rs 1,800 crore in revenues over the last three years due to remixes and cover versions. The IPRS and IMI have launched a campaign asking for deletion of Section 52 (1) (j), which legitimises the use of literary, musical and underlying works without the owners' consent and encourages recording popular songs using fresh musicians or singers. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/commons-law From lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Thu Jul 24 02:11:27 2003 From: lawrenceliang at vsnl.net (lawrenceliang at vsnl.net) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 15:41:27 -0500 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Article on version recording Message-ID: <200307232041.h6NKfQh02560@webmail2.vsnl.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030723/c6b4c0f2/attachment.pl From saif42 at hotmail.com Wed Jul 23 21:49:42 2003 From: saif42 at hotmail.com (Dev Gangjee) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:19:42 +0100 Subject: [Commons-Law] Composers and Copyright References: <29950-220037020142458901@M2W050.mail2web.com> Message-ID: Just a clarification on Section 52... I was really surprised at the limited 2 year period of copyright availablility and had a look at the full text of Section 52 which excludes certain acts from infringement. While it certainly does limit the amount of protection available, it appears to be operating more as a 'compulsory license' sort of provision. Once two years have passed and the work appears to have been commercially exploited, then third parties - call them T-series for short? :) - can give notice, pay royalties at a rate fixed by the Copyright Board and get down to churning out cheaper copies, while the copyright still remains with the original holder but in a more diluted/less monopolistic form. Perhaps the rationale was to give a first mover advantage for the first two years and then allow others to provide cheaper alternatives while at the same time paying royalties to the original copyright holder for the full duration of the copyright... 51.. Certain acts not to be infringement of copyright.-- 1.. The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright namely:- 10.. the making of sound recordings in respect of any literary, dramatic or musical work, if -- 1.. sound recordings of that work have previously been made by, or with the licence or consent of, the owner of the copyright in the work; 2.. the person making the sound recordings, has given a notice of his intention to make the sound recordings, has provided copies of all covers or labels with which the sound recordings are to be sold, and has paid in the prescribed manner to the owner of rights in the work royalties in respect of all such sound recordings to be made by him, at the rate fixed by the Copyright Board in this behalf: Provided that-- 3.. no alterations shall be made which have not been made previously by or with the consent of the owner of rights, or which are not reasonably necessary for the adaptation of the work for the purpose of making the sound recordings; 4.. the sound recordings shall not be issued in any form of packaging or with any label which is likely to mislead or confuse the public as to their identity; 5.. no such sound recording shall be made until the expiration of two calendar years after the end of the year in which the first recording of the work was made; and 6.. the person making such sound recordings shall allow the owner of rights or his duly authorised agent or representative to inspect all records and books of account relating to such sound recording: Provided further that if on a complaint brought before the Copyright Board to the effect that the owner of rights has not been paid in full for any sound recordings purporting to be made in pursuance of this clause, the Copyright Board is, prima facie satisfied that the complaint is genuine, it may pass an order ex parte directing the person making the sound recording to cease from making further copies and, after holding such inquiry as it considers necessary, make such further order as it may deem fit, including an order for payment of royalty; ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 3:24 PM Subject: [Commons-Law] Composers and Copyright Many of you would have caught the news of Indian film composers meeting with L.K. Advani last week asking for a change in the Copyright Law regarding remixes. (I've reproduced the Mid-Day news item below). I suspect that there's an interesting history to this business of remixes: something we know came here from England (Bally Sagoo et al) in turn borrowing from reggae rhythms: and creating souped up variations of Hindi classics. This was the first time that a form invented by the Indian diaspora has made such inroads, and I wonder just what the history of two-year clause to the amendment to the Copyright Act 52-1-j-iii is? The controversial clause is: "no such sound recording shall be made until the expiration of two calendar years after the end of the year in which the first recording of the work was made". Given the effort to keep all copyright in virtual perpetuity, two years is an astonishing small period for copyright holders to hang on to their rights! Ashish From kream77 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 23 23:02:38 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 18:32:38 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] A compilation of interesting articles Message-ID: <20030723173238.35513.qmail@web12308.mail.yahoo.com> I read a lot of tech sites and subscribe to the daily headlines from slashdot - which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." . I've seen lots of high quality discussions on law / policy / tech / freedom / stufflikethat. I often come across interesting articles which I feel that some friends of mine who are into tech / law / policy / IP / public domain / should read. I ve compiled this list of articles I thought were interesting, compelling and cool from approximately December 2002. Most of the 150 articles indexed below are taken from slashdot and a few here and there are from kuro5hin. They're listed in rough CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER - the reason being that on many complex and long running issues getting the background info is quite important. If this compilation is of use to you, i'd be quite kicked if you mailed me about how and where you used it ... getting information like this into wider circulation is the very reason I've done this... .Time, net access and patience permitting, i'll be releasing a weekly update of similar stuff that I find interesting, compelling and cool. Compiling this thing involved heavy use of the copy and paste muscles (control-c and control-v, Lawrence) which have been lying dormant since the last time I have had to submit an assignment for law school. For this exercise, I used the excellent Mozilla Firebird Browser - which I recommend all of you try out - it's small, free, very fast, clean and extremely stable. I'd even say it's neck and neck with Opera. Or maybe even better. http://www.mozilla.org/ Aniruddha Karim Shankar Table of Contents - Problems in opensource licensing W3C proposes new Patents Policy FSF's faq on why you should say GNU/Linux (die-dead-horse-die ) Patents choking off Medical Research What Lawyers Can Learn From Manga & fan fiction Pirate Anime FAQ Simultaneous use of GPL & Commercial licenses Robin Gross and IP Justice US state department is trying to block international support of OSS and Free (Libre) Software. P2P Content Delivery for Open Source Jack Valenti's views on the Digital Age Is the BSA's Grace Period a Scam ? Japan Subsidizes Linux Development, Considers Switch Open Source Book a Collective Effort Shared Source vs. Open Source Calif. EULA Case Open Content Music Database Launched Article on Westlaw & Lexis restricting access to case databases ;) The Case Against Intellectual Property Advice to Microsoft regarding commodity software - from David Stutz, ex-employee. Eben Moglen, stalwart supporter of the EFF and the FSF answers questions Lawyers Say Hackers Are Sentenced Too Harshly Creation Myths: Does innovation require intellectual property rights? Taiwan Forces MS To Cut Prices, Unbundle Software Dismal Failure of Internet Filters In Australia Draft Bills from Oregon and Texas that would require consideration of OSS by governments. Forbes Editorial on Lessig and Eldred v Ashcroft - good read Launching Gutenberg Radio - Public Domain Audiobooks "Super-DMCA" Laws In Tennessee and Arkansas Update on State "Communications Services" Laws “Open Source Enables Terrorist States” EFF's Cindy Cohn Talks About Patriot Act II Why do People Write Open Source Software ? Grokster's President Talks about Court Win Brain Privacy Software Patents: From Legal Wordings to Economic Reality U.S. Says Canada Cares Too Much About Liberties (couldnt resist this ;) ) The Law and P2P RIAA Nightmare: Professional Portable Hard Disk Recorder Legally Defining "Unauthorized" Computer Access The War Between p2p and Record Companies Heating Up? Lessig on Streamcast/Grokster Decision When copyprotection fails MPA targets Lyric sites Is Data Mining for Product Pricing Illegal ? Online Newshour Tackling Digital Copyright Lessig And RIAA Answer NewsHour Questions Monsanto Plant Patent Case Winds On What if SCO is Right? Does Gaming Reduce Productivity? W3C Patent Policy Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed OSI vs SCO RIAA vs The Economy FSF Threatens GPL Lawsuit SCO Claims Linux Sales After Suit Irrelevant Open Source Music Non-Competes Might Mean Loss Of Benefits Kalam's Advocacy for OSS - good discussion SCO v. Linux ... continued Copy Protection a "Crime Against Humanity" ? Law and Virtual Worlds Kazaa/Altnet To Pay Users For Trading Content Defense Dept. Memo Explains Open Source Policy Public Domain Enhancement Act Opensouce movement looks at copyright defeats... SCO SCO SCO! BSA Creates Piracy Statistics DMCA Vs. The Sewing Underground !!!! – yes, sewing as in needle and thread SCO Shows 80 Lines of Evidence? “43 Million Americans Use P2P Software” UCITA Stalled At State Level Did SCO 'Borrow' Linux Code? Model End Vendor License Agreement – from EULA to EVLA ? Who Opposes Open Source Software In Government? Apple Sued Over Unix Trademark SCO Gives Friday Deadline To IBM Red Hat License Challenged Microsoft Flouting DOJ Settlement? No Business Like SCO Business European MP Responds on Software Patents IBM Doesn't Comply With SCO's Deadline Settling SCOres SCO terminates IBM's license IBM Responds To SCO: Business As Usual Lobbyists Urge South Australia To Drop Open Source Bill SCO Amends Suit, Clarifies "Violations", Triples Damages EU Moves Towards Single European Patent Standard Using Closed Standards To Pay For Open Ones Europe, Free Speech, And The Internet Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing, Crypto Breaking? The Power Behind the SCO Nuisance UK Govt Warned: Don't Buy GPL My Visit to SCO Legitimate uses for DeCSS SCO Protest And Anti-Protest In Provo Piracy Deterrence and Education Act Introduced Culture Clash: SCO, OpenLinux, Linus And The GPL What is Open Source? KaZaA Wants to Be An Official Content Distributor RMS Cuts Through Some SCO FUD Public Domain Act Introduced Into Congress Hall On Worldwide Open Source Movement Law Prof Examines SCO Case Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass More on European Software Patents $180 Million for Piracy Conspiracy Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry Windows Tech Writer Looks at Linux – check this out Engaging with the OSS Community EU Parliament to Vote on New Patent Rules TV Brick - Open Source TV Streaming? Bill Gates on Linux OpenContent Closes Its Doors A Critical Look at Trusted Computing EFF Ad Campaign On File Swapping (badri, can we see some shots ?) Digital Shoplifting From real world Bookstores (using cellphones with cameras) Linus Torvalds about SCO, IP, MS and Transmeta Estonia: Where the Internet is a Human Right Freenet Creator Debates RIAA SCO Taking Linux Discussion To Japan 9th Circuit Court Finds 'Thumbnailing' Fair Use Linux vs. SCO: The Decision Matrix - Check this out Open Source Law Is Law Copyrighted? Open Source Organization Models Discussed OSCON Panel: SCO Lawsuit About the Money Cringely On Electronic Tapping Evangelizing OSS in the Caribbean How to Legally Infuriate the RIAA? Napster, Audio Fingerprinting, and the Future of P2P DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe DoJ's 'Anti-Piracy' Lawyers answer questions.... interesting. Linus says Linux IP is sound. Freenet 0.5.2 Released - check this out. House Bill to Make File-Sharing an Automatic Felony Seminar On Details Of The GPL And Related Licenses Microsoft Names Linux as Number 2 Risk Deep Linking Legal in Germany SCO Awarded UNIX Copyright Regs, McBride Interview Embarrassing Governments Into Adopting Open Source SCO Extorting Unixware Licenses to Linux Users? Problems in opensource licensing from an aussie perspective, but lots of general points. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/13/8422/16656 W3C proposes new Patents Policy W3C is planning to change their rules so that patented technologies will be accepted as standards for the Web (like http, html) , subject to "royalty-free license" requirements. FSF cries foul FSF's faq on why you should say GNU/Linux (die-dead-horse-die ) http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html Patents choking off Medical Research "[ there is an] absence of truly innovative drugs in current drug company pipelines. And the explanation for that might well come from the supposed fount of American innovation: our patent system." Apparently they are trapped in a situation where "it's much easier to argue that `patents support innovation' than to try to explain that some patents are good for innovation while others are bad." http://www.thenewrepublic.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021007&s=thompson100702 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/02/1339205 What Lawyers Can Learn From Manga Lawrence Lessig, writing "This article explains the interesting phenomenon of dojinshi (fan created art), and why dojinshi helps fuel the production of original manga. From a western-perspective, dojinshi breaks copyright laws, but, according to the article's author: 'The law is a rough-edged tool. It was not crafted by geniuses of economics.' In a time when laws like the DMCA exist and are being exploited, this is certainly food for thought." http://www.redherring.com/insider/2003/01/copycats011003.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/10/2256238 the Pirate Anime FAQ the most comprehensive and detailed guide to spotting bootleg and counterfeit anime/manga related goods - The Pirate Anime FAQ. http://www.digital.anime.org.uk/piratefaq.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/31/2114210 Simultaneous use of GPL & Commercial licenses dual licensing (simultaneous use of both GPL and proprietary license) works. Dual licensing gives you basically both the support of the community and a profitable Microsoft-like business model. Seems that this model used by MySQL and TrollTech is getting more popular. http://www.open-mag.com/1043683279.htm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/10/213217 Robin Gross and IP Justice former EFF attorney Robin Gross is starting up a new group called IP Justice in order to 'promote balance in global intellectual property law.' http://news.com.com/2008-1082-981663.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/24/0238232 US state department is trying to block international support of OSS and Free (Libre) Software. However, Department of Homeland Security moves from Win2k to Linux http://pigdog.org/auto/digital_gar_gar_gar/link/2781.html http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/03/01/15/030115hnwsisos.xml http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/01/27/1831240&tid=2 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/27/2045236 P2P Content Delivery for Open Source The Open Content Network is a collaborative effort to help deliver open source, public domain, and Creative Commons-licensed content using peer-to-peer technology. The network is essentially a huge 'virtual web server' that links together thousands of computers for the purpose of helping out over-burdened/slashdotted web sites. Any existing mirror or web site can easily join the OCN by tweaking the HTML on their site. http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/29/1823218 Jack Valenti's views on the Digital Age interview with Jack Valenti. He gives his thoughts on government mandated copy prevention, fair use, and lobbying. In response to his famous 'VCR is [to the movie industry]...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.' quote, he responds, 'I wasn't opposed to the VCR.' And what does he think of his current job? 'I think lobbying is really an honest profession.'" http://www.hpronline.org/news/347207.html?mkey=628413 http://cmusings.blogspot.com/2003_02_02_cmusings_archive.html#88495460 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/05/1828238 Is the BSA's Grace Period a Scam ? An anonymous reader asks: "I work at a small non-profit that has 18 employees plus a 13 seat computer lab. We received a form letter from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) telling us to do a self audit and if we find any unlicensed software to report it during our 'Grace Period' because 'if you organization's software is not licensed, it could become to focus of a BSA investigation'. Now this is obviously a method to scare up some business for the BSA members. If we ignore this, how likely is it that we will be 'investigated'. I know that I cannot produce the original CD's and/or documentation for some of the software that we HAVE paid for." http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/02/0733256 Japan Subsidizes Linux Development, Considers Switch Japan is betting 50 million yen ($450k US) that the next-generation of high-tech products and computer networks will rely on open-source software. The money is to develop an 'operating system for consumer electronics goods'. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030205/ap_wo_en_bu/as_tec_japan_linux_1 Open Source Book a Collective Effort The New Zealand Open Source Society has begun a project to write a book to put the case for open source use in business and government. There is a need for a book which clearly puts the case for using open source, and provides a clear migration plan. Already five authors and several reviewers have stepped forward to commit time to writing the book. However, other authors and reviewers would be welcome to join the project." http://www.nzoss.org.nz/portal/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=45 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/09/1535228 Shared Source vs. Open Source "Microsoft are fond of touting Shared Source as being "as good as" Open Source, with a view to muddying the waters as much as possible, and so keeping as many people away from the benefits of Open Source Software (OSS) (particularly Software Libré AKA "Free Software") as they can. This new article analysing the differences arrives just in time for Microsoft's Australia-wide series of "Competitive Hour" misinformation sessions on Open Source, and includes a handy list of potentially showstopper questions. We'd like your help in putting these and other questions to the speaker during such misinformation sessions, with the dual aim of opening the eyes of many of the audience, and reporting back to us what was said so that we can refine the questions to close whatever loopholes are employed in evading these important issues." Differences at http://linux.org.au/~leonb/articles/picking-up-your-marbles.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/10/1213257 Calif. EULA Case "News.com has this story about a California woman suing Microsoft, Symantec and others, seeking class-action status on behalf of all Californians who've bought software including Norton Antivirus 2002, Norton Systemworks and Windows XP Upgrade. She claims that the companies have devised a scheme to sell software licenses without allowing purchasers to review the license prior to sale. She also claims that people who reject the license cannot return the software to the store. She bases this on her rejecting the EULAs for the software mentioned above, going back to CompUSA and being told she couldn't return them because the boxes were opened." http://news.com.com/2100-1001-983988.html http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/10/190242 Open Content Music Database Launched "The open source music database MusicBrainz was launched officially today. The data is partly in the public domain, partly under an open content like license. It includes artist/album/track information, with more to come. There's support for CDDB-like CD identification (actually, a lot of the current data was imported from freedb), but also identification of single tracks via audio fingerprints (TRMs). Help both in adding new content by tagging your music collection and consolidating the existing data is welcome. http://musicbrainz.org/news/pressreleases/20030211-1.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/12/0155219 Article on Westlaw & Lexis restricting access to case databases ;) '[T]he courts and the court's words belong to us. In more ways than one, the American people have already paid for the case law produced by our courts. Commercial vendors must not be allowed to highjack our law or dictate who may have access to it. By refusing to allow public libraries to purchase electronic subscriptions that can serve their patrons, Westlaw and LexisNexis are closing the door on information.' http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jan03/barr.htm http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/13/163259 The Case Against Intellectual Property David Levine, who teaches at UCLA and Michele Boldrin argue that current IP laws encourage an inefficient rent model and stifle the potential for innovation without intellectual monopoly. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch1.pdf http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch2.pdf http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/14/1914236 Advice to Microsoft regarding commodity software - from David Stutz, ex-employee. He covers opensource, the MS business model. interesting stuff. http://www.synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html Eben Moglen, stalwart supporter of the EFF and the FSF answers questions on what has been FSF's biggest win and biggest loss, Clarifying the GPL, advice to independent developers regarding the GPL, the non-legal language in which the GPL is drafted, what can be done about spurious legal threats, long term survival prospects of Free software, how to be a lawyer without selling out to big money ;) ... lots of other cool stuff. must read. http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/20/1544245 Lawyers Say Hackers Are Sentenced Too Harshly The nation's largest group of defense lawyers on Wednesday published a position paper arguing that people convicted of computer-related crimes tend to get stiffer sentences than comparable non-computer-related offenses.' http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about/cases/1030%20Comments%202-19-03.pdf http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/21/1545209 Creation Myths: Does innovation require intellectual property rights? discussion on a Paper written by a pair of economists and published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the reactions to it of several other economists. A snippet from the article: '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."' Taiwan Forces MS To Cut Prices, Unbundle Software Microsoft has agreed to cut prices on their software after a backlash from the country's effort to crack down on piracy. Seems the citizens were forced to obtain pirated copies due to the high cost and having to buy software they did not need to get the parts they DID need." http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-986228.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/27/1916211 Dismal Failure of Internet Filters In Australia the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA), the department responsible for implementing the insane Internet regulatory framework put in place by the current government, is about to drop a number of Internet Filtering packages due to their ineffectiveness. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/03/1046540132206.html http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/04/0116227 Draft Bills from Oregon and Texas that would require consideration of OSS by governments. 'Requires state government to consider using open source software when acquiring new software. Sets other requirements for acquiring software.' Oregon Biil stalls under heavy attack from MS. http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/tlo/viewtext.cmd?LEG=78&SESS=R&CHAMBER=S&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=01579&VERSION=1&TYPE=B http://www.leg.state.or.us/03reg/measures/hb2800.dir/hb2892.intro.html http://www.leg.state.or.us/barnhart/hb2892.htm http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/03/06/018222.shtml?tid=4 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/06/1815239 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/16/0030247 http://www.leg.state.or.us/03reg/measures/hb2800.dir/hb2892.intro.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/18/2054202 http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/05/10/138240.shtml?tid=4 Forbes Editorial on Lessig and Eldred v Ashcroft - good read 'Maybe Congress should just be done with it and declare that a copyright is forever....Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig has proposed a sensible compromise..."[I]f Congress is listening to the frustration that the court's decision has created, [paying to maintain copyright extensions] would be a simple and effective way for the First Branch to respond." http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0331/027.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/15/1711213 Launching Gutenberg Radio - Public Domain Audiobooks http://www.etc-edu.com/ http://www.promo.net/pg/ "Super-DMCA" Laws In Tennessee and Arkansas These bills threaten personal privacy, anonymity, and security research. SB 213 and HB457 are similar to state laws introduced all over the country by the MPAA. http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/Bills/currentga/Bill/sb0213.pdf http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/Bills/currentga/Bill/hb0457.pdf http://www.publicknowledge.org/education/super-dmcas.php http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/states/ Update on State "Communications Services" Laws "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting a breaking news item: Colorado Governor Owens has vetoed a super-DMCA-like bill similar to the one passed in Michigan." Felten has a comment on the Colorado bill. Tennessee is delaying their consideration of the bill. And Oregon's bill has died for now; see below for more. http://www.eff.org/news/breaking/archives/2003_05.php#000283 http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000392.html http://tennessean.com/business/archives/03/05/33062618.shtml?Element_ID=33062618 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/23/1718212 "Open Source Enables Terrorist States" '...due to world events and the evolving threat posed by increasingly capable nation-states...' US DARPA funding for the OpenBSD project cancelled. For those who don't know, OpenBSD is one of the prime forces behind openssl, ubiquitous encryption software used by websites the world over. http://64.90.164.50/article.php3?sid=20030422123107 http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2003-04/1862.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/23/0256240 EFF's Cindy Cohn Talks About Patriot Act II Here's an interview with EFF's Legal Director Cindy Cohn, where she talks about the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, or 'Patriot Act II'. She talks about what the act is, how it might infringe on your freedoms, where it does right and how ordinary people can make a difference. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=61971&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=158&tid=103&mode=thread&cid=5812594 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/25/1326200 Why do People Write Open Source Software ? "Two interesting articles try to answer this question. One's at NewsForge, the other's at Cybernaut.com. The two writers reach conclusions that are almost exactly opposite. Which one is right? http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/04/19/2128256&tid=11 http://cybernaut.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=8&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/26/1417247 Grokster's President Talks about Court Win Now that the Morpheus/Grokster trial is over, the heads of the various P2P services are hoisting their glasses in triumph. Ciarán Tannam interviews Grokster President Wayne Rosso to get his two cents on the verdict. Xolox also applauded the ruling and posted this release. Of course, it aint over yet as the RIAA has vowed appeal." http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/grokster.html http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2003/xolox.html Brain Privacy "As neuroscience advances and brain scans become more sophisticated, the Boston Globe points out that some privacy advocates are concerned about brain privacy. Could employees be scanned for violent or depressive impulses? Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality? It sounds like a Philip K. Dick vision of the future, but some predict this will be a bigger ethical issue than genetics." original article seems to have disappeared but the discussion's still there. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/01/1531228 Software Patents: From Legal Wordings to Economic Reality Record of goings on at conference where organisers said that they will bring together programmers, engineers, entrepreneurs, law scholars, economists and politicians to explore the whole chain of causality from proposed patent law regulations to European policy goals, such as promoting innovation, competition, enterpreneurial spirit and consumer protection, unbureaucratic and target-oriented governance, legal security, favorable conditions for small and medium enterprises and "becoming the world's most competitive information society by 2010". http://swpat.ffii.org/events/2003/europarl/05/index.en.html U.S. Says Canada Cares Too Much About Liberties (couldnt resist this ;) ) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/04/2311201 - excellent, provocative discussion. The Law and P2P continuing saga of copyright enforcement and Apple's attempt at a constructive approach." http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20030508_sprigman.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/08/1518247 RIAA Nightmare: Professional Portable Hard Disk Recorder "Anybody interested in creating their own MP3 or WAV recordings should take a look at this device. It is a compact hard drive recorder that looks like it is the next logical step beyond ADAT. My interest is fair use, the ability to record my compositions and performance with studio grade equipment at a reasonable cost. http://www.micsupply.com/722.htm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/08/2021247 Legally Defining "Unauthorized" Computer Access "Orin S. Kerr, Associate Professor at George Washington University Law School, has written an article trying to answer the question "what does it mean to 'access' a computer? And when is access 'unauthorized'?" http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=399740 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/09/1647209 The War Between p2p and Record Companies Heating Up? there may be a new nasty turn to the battle between the p2p networks and the RIAA/MPAA. recently, the RIAA has been trying to flood kazza with files that appear to be valid copyrighted material (movies,mp3s, ect) but are empty or, in one case, of Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, contain a voice file asking, "What the f*ck do you think you are doing?". The p2p networks are considering a possible move agianst the RIAA in response to this by using recently enacted anti-spam laws." http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/158 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/11/1518237 Lessig on Streamcast/Grokster Decision editorial in Financial Times regarding the recent court decision in favor Streamcast (which distributes "Morpheus") and Grokster. 'The wisdom of this rule is something innovators in Silicon Valley are increasingly coming to see. When courts intervene to maintain copyright's balance, the inevitable consequence is that innovation is harmed. If every innovator with technologies affecting content must bear the burden of a lawsuit before his innovation can be allowed, there will be many fewer innovations in the distribution and creation of content. That in turn will harm artists and technologists alike. Better to let the innovation happen, and then consider whether the change caused by the innovation is so significant as to require new legislation by the legislature.'" http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1051389898745 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/12/118211 When copyprotection fails "The Age in Australia has an article today explaining the experiences of a Melbourne guy who purchased the Norah Jones CD tht is 'copy protected.' Unfortunately the only way he could listen to the CD on Apple computers or Intel computers running XP was to copy the CD. This sort of defeats the purpose of the copy protection in the first place. Serious yet amusing at the same time." http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/13/1052591771111.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/14/0348212 MPA targets Lyric sites "Apparently the Music Publishers Association is cracking down on sites, like LyricFind, that display song lyrics without permission. 'Just because there is no central licensing body it doesn't make it right to take lyrics and publish them without permission.' says Sarah Faulder of the MPA." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3019681.stm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/14/040206 Is Data Mining for Product Pricing Illegal ? "I started to read Orin S. Kerr's 80-page paper looking for how his proposal would pertain to: ripping music/movies, P2P, corporate espionage, and lastly, the use of web scraper robots. Little did I know just how relevant his paper would be in regards to that last item! Kerr makes note of EF Cultural Travel v. Explorica in which Explorica is caught hiring a consultant to program a scraping robot to gather pricing information from a competitor, EF Cultural Travel. Well, I do consulting on the side from home and am currently working a project whereby I gather pricing information from all the major travel conglomerates (Orbitz, Expedia, Lodging.com, WorldRes, Sabre, etc.) so that the travel booking business that hired me can meet or beat all their prices. Granted, the circumstances of the Explorica case are different and the case was an example of an extreme ruling, but my questions to the Slashdot community are: Do I notify the company that hired me of the Explorica case? Why is using a scraper robot so different from, say, walking into Best Buy with a handheld and recording product pricing manually? Should I continue with this project and the similar projects I do in this area of programming?" Now, add in the text in the "deliverables" section of this press release and it seems we may have some contradictory information. Who is right, and under what circumstances is price harvesting off of the internet not allowed? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/09/1647209&tid=123 http://www.phillipsnizer.com/library/cases/lib_case312.cfm Online Newshour Tackling Digital Copyright online version of the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer is tackling copyright in the digital age. They are sponsoring a forum where Lawrence Lessig will square off against RIAA executive Matt Oppenheim. Anyone can submit questions, and the best questions or comments will be posted to Lessig and Oppenheim for debate and discussion. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/april-may03/copyright.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/digital_copyright/index.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/15/2259240 Lessig And RIAA Answer NewsHour Questions "The answers are finally in! Stanford's Lawrence Lessig and the RIAA's Matt Oppenheim have responded to all the tough questions on copyrighted music, many from Slashdot readers, for the online part of the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Take a look - some of the responses may surprise you." http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/12/0210223 Monsanto Plant Patent Case Winds On this is about the saskatchewan farmer sued by monsanto for growing their patented canola which crosspollinated his field http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/17/1645212 What if SCO is Right? " What if SCO is right. Bruce Perens was quoted with this scenario. "it's entirely possible that SCO was inadvertently distributing its own proprietary Unix code in its version of Linux. In that case, SCO would've already released its Unix source code into open source". But here's the catch: Does this validate Microsoft's view of a "viral GPL"?" http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10000066 http://news.com.com/2100-1001-268889.html?legacy=cnet http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/18/1613218 Does Gaming Reduce Productivity? just thought i'd sneak this in :) http://www.avault.com/articles/getarticle.asp?name=reducprod W3C Patent Policy "According to ComputerWorld, the Patent Policy Working Group at the W3C is ready to release a new proposal for dealing with technology patents that get in the way of creating web standards. While making no comment, the W3C was seeking public input for its Royalty Free Patent Policy until April 30th." http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/webdev/story/0,10801,81309,00.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/19/2113250 "The World Wide Web Consortium has approved the W3C Patent Policy based on review by the W3C Advisory Committee and thanks to lots of input and cajoling from the Open Source community and slashdoters. Read the public Director's decision. We're the first major standards organization that sets the explicit goal of producing only standards that can be implemented without paying patent royalties. Our policy requires legal commitments from all who contribute to the development of Web standards that patents held by the contributor will be available on royalty-free terms. Both proprietary and open source software have been critical to the growth of the Web. With this policy, we intend to enabled continued innovation by both open source and proprietary development." http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20030520.html http://www.w3.org/2003/05/12-director-patent-decision-public.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/21/134254 Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus Formed "News.com reports that three members from the House of Reps has formed a caucus that aims to stop piracy and make for stronger IP laws. One of the members of the caucus: helped author a note last fall to 74 fellow Democrats assailing the Linux open-source operating system's GNU General Public License as a threat to America's 'innovation and security.'" http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1007908.html OSI vs SCO "As expected, the OSI's just given the SCO vs IBM case a bite with this position paper. "SCO has never owned the UNIX trademark. IBM neither requested nor required SCO's permission to call their AIX offering a Unix. That decision lies not with the accidental owner of the historical Bell Labs source code, but with the Open Group."" RIAA vs The Economy "Boycott-RIAA.com is running an analysis of the RIAA sales vs a number of other large corporations. It was compiled by Justin Moore at Duke University. It is really quite interesting, showing the the RIAA sales are pretty much consistent with the rest of the economy. From the analysis: I would assert, however that it does make the case in cold, hard numbers that the RIAA's claim of digital piracy ravaging their sales must be taken with a rather large grain of salt. The CEOs of Eastman-Kodak are in a nearly identical economic situation as the RIAA, yet do not have the luxury of blaming digital piracy." http://www.boycott-riaa.com/analysis.php http://www.cs.duke.edu/~justin/copyright/riaa/RIAA-vs-Economy.html#aboutme http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/20/2135207 http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html FSF Threatens GPL Lawsuit "Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News reports that OpenTV is violating the GNU General Public License. He notes that the Free Software Foundation is threatening to file a lawsuit in the case. " http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001029.shtml#001029 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/21/1932253 SCO Claims Linux Sales After Suit Irrelevant "Here's the first reaction I've seen from SCO regarding the public's stance that the code they distributed under the GPL negates their claims on code in the Linux kernel. They claim that the lack of copyright notices "placed by the copyright holder" means that the GPL does not protect the unmentioned code in question. " http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/22/1053196680078.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/22/1723229 Open Source Music "As big labels battle it out in a Post-Napster world, open source comes to music ... Creative Commons has a feature on an open source style music site for artists launched by Sal Randolph.." http://creativecommons.org/learn/features/opsound http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/24/0230206 Non-Competes Might Mean Loss Of Benefits "WashTech is running a story about how having a non-compete agreement could cause loss of unemployment benefits. While non-compete agreements are addressed in unemployment benefits policies, it seems you still get shafted because it forces you to accept any employment outside your field, making it much harder to find work in your field." http://www.washtech.org/wt/news/industry/display.php?ID_Content=457 Delays and Problems for India's New CDMA Network http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/26/005203 Kalam's Advocacy for OSS - good discussion http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/29/1226247 SCO v. Linux ... continued "ComputerWorld has an interview with Chris Sontag, from SCO. Now the story has a pretty face." The interview has a variety of comments worth noting like how much source code SCO thinks has slipped from unix to linux. This story continues to amaze me. http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,81613,00.html?nas=AM-81613 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/29/1752208 Copy Protection a "Crime Against Humanity" ? "An article over at Wired looks into the relation between copy protection and the reality of a rational amount of 'wiggle room' that is typically provided by the legal system. It's a topic covered often on Slashdot, but it's still a good read. Should be accompanied by a visit to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for your Daily Dose of Defending Digital Freedom." The article does a good job of giving examples of legal leeway that's granted every day. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/view.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/30/0227258 Law and Virtual Worlds "In light of yesterday's spirited discussion of the Shadowbane hack, I thought folks might be interested in this forthcoming article about the laws of virtual worlds. The article has three parts: 1) a history of virtual worlds (e.g. Space War --> MMORPGs), 2) a theoretical analysis of whether virtual world "property" can/should be treated as legal property, and 3) an analysis of whether virtual worlds can/should give rise to any other legal rights, i.e. rights of avatars -- an idea first floated by Raph Koster. I realize there are plenty of strongly-held and divergent opinions on this, so hopefully this might add to the ongoing conversation. Also, we're revising this for publication over the summer, so we will be reading the comments for any corrections/insights/humor that we can incorporate into our revisions." http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/29/176236 http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/28/1452201&tid=209 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=402860 http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/playerrights.html Kazaa/Altnet To Pay Users For Trading Content "News.com is reporting that Kazaa and Altnet are unrolling a setup where users are paid to distribute 'authorized content.' The article also mentions something about getting rid of unauthorized files, but is unclear on when and how. I'll be paying close attention to whether this P2P business model pans out; http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-1011827.html?tag=fd_top http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/02/1841239 Defense Dept. Memo Explains Open Source Policy "DoD issued a policy statement leveling the playing field for Open Source. We have the memo on the Center of Open Source & Government site." The requirements listed in this memo make me think of a company policy along the lines of "You can bring your baby or toddler to work, so long as it can talk, feed itself and stick effortlessly to the ceiling like a spider." See this PDF for more information about National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Policy (NSTISSP) number 11." http://www.egovos.org/ http://niap.nist.gov/niap/library/nstissp_11.pdf Public Domain Enhancement Act "" 'This statute would require American copyright owners to pay a very low fee (for example, $1) fifty years after a copyrighted work was published. If the owner pays the fee, the copyright will continue for whatever duration Congress sets. But if the copyright is not worth even $1 to the owner, then we believe the work should pass into the public domain.'" See the brief description of the Act if you aren't familiar with what Eldred and Lessig are proposing. http://www.eldred.cc/eablog/EldredActOnePage5.htm http://eldred.cc/ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/03/1641229 Opensouce movement looks at copyright defeats... "Over the last few years, we've seen what looks like the victory of copyright and business interest at the expense of the consumer. There's been The DMCA, the UCITA, all of the legal wranging over DeCSS, and so on. Copyright holders can even shut your website down without doing the research about whether or not it was appropriate. Johansen did seem to be acquited of some of what was brought against him as a result of the DeCSS situation, but that was in Norway. Does anyone know of any copyright or consumer victories on the net in the last few years? Something that limits the abilities of these laws, or otherwise acts in the copyright spirit of free use? My hat is off to GNU and EFF, even Project Gutenberg. What is the status of this ongoing battle? I'm looking for the sunny side to a situation that seems littered with defeat." http://www.cpsr.org/program/UCITA/ucita-fact.html http://anti-dmca.org/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30943.html http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DeCSS_prosecutions/Johansen_DeCSS_case/ SCO SCO SCO! "more links on SCO's assorted allegations of copyright infringement. They say they're going to sue Novell. Software analysts refuse to be part of the hoax - also some good quotes from Linus here. SCO and UNIX: a Comedy of Errors. Salon has a story on SCO too, but sadly it's not available to read freely. And Wired has an old story which I think sums up the SCO claims pretty well. http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1011627.html http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,81695,00.html http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=514_0_3_0_C http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,57095,00.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/03/2012255 BSA Creates Piracy Statistics ""According to this story on Yahoo! news the BSA commissioned a study that decided that 39% of all business software is pirated, down from 40%. The decline is attributed to the BSA's enforcement techniques. 'The piracy rate was calculated by comparing the researchers' estimates on demand with data on actual software sales.'" In other words, some guys sat in a room and decided that people probably wanted to buy ten copies of software, but only five were sold, so the piracy rate must therefore be 50%. By a similar process we can calculate that 99% of all ocean-front homes are pirated." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&ncid=738&e=9&u=/ap/20030603/ap_on_hi_te/software_piracy http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/04/1230250 DMCA Vs. The Sewing Underground !!!! the folks at monsterpatterns.com dumpster-dive to get envelopes containing discontinued sewing patterns and sell the envelopes via their website. The sewing pattern company McCall invoked the DMCA to get the site shut down. Monsterpatterns is now suing to protect their 'fair use rights' to advertise and sell the discarded patterns. You might recall that this isn't the first time the sewing industry has cracked down on bootlegging grandmas and their suppliers." http://news.com.com/2009-1088-984352.html?tag=fd_rndm#38 http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/5/prweb67370.php http://archives.seul.org/freehaven/dev/Aug-2000/msg00003.html SCO Shows 80 Lines of Evidence? "In this EETimes article SCO claims to have shown their evidence to our independent analyst friends from the Aberdeen Group. The evidence, all 80 lines of it, allegedly even has identical comments." http://eet.com/sys/news/OEG20030606S0039 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=6453 43 Million Americans Use P2P Software "If the NYTimes article is correct then somewhere around 1 in 6 Americans apparently are unindicted felons. In the eyes of the public file swapping is as morally wrong as speeding on the NJ Turnpike. The rest of the article talks about the RIAA's carrot/stick/education approach and how they may find themselves entering into negotiations for some forms of file sharing. Also the EFF will be running ads in Rolling Stone next month asking if enthusiasts are tired of being treated like criminals." http://nytimes.com/2003/06/08/technology/08TUNE.html http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/17-18red.htm UCITA Stalled At State Level "Four states have passed anti-UCITA laws and Massachusetts may soon become the fifth. Meanwhile, only two states have adopted the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, which gives software vendors all the benefits and none of the burdens of the consequences of publishing their software. The details can be found at ComputerWorld and an opinion piece by Frank Hayes can be found here." http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,81812,00.html http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legalissues/story/0,10801,78567,00.html Did SCO 'Borrow' Linux Code? "Apparently someone inside SCO has stated that SCO(actually Caldera) copied Linux code into System V. They did it to build what they now market as Linux Kernel Personality - the ability to run Linux software on their Unix. Now, the open source community(of course they don't mention who) is jumping on this, because they didn't return the changes to the OS community or give the community credit. Of course, SCO says it's a misunderstanding and, get this 'SCO also never used any of the Linux kernel code.'" http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1123176,00.asp http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/10/2324214 Model End Vendor License Agreement "Low End Mac is presenting this article as a humor piece, but its vision of an End Vendor License Agreement seems to be pretty well thought out, and one that I wouldn't mind seeing in the real world." http://lowendmac.com/lite/03/0610.html Who Opposes Open Source Software In Government? "Linux Journal is doing a story with a roundup of who the players are that are opposing open source in governments. The one I find interesting is the Gates connection to BSA. But I think we all need to become familiar with this round-up of special interest groups not operating in our interests (as taxpayers)." http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6927 Apple Sued Over Unix Trademark "CNET News reports The Open Group is suing Apple over unlicensed use of the Unix trademark, after Apple used the term in conjunction with its Mac OS X marketing. Apple, meanwhile, is countersuing to have the Unix trademark declared invalid because the term has become generic." http://news.com.com/2100-1016-1015814.html SCO Gives Friday Deadline To IBM "Reuters is reporting that SCO is planning to revoke IBM's license to Unix this Friday unless IBM settles SCO's claim that parts of its Unix code are being used in Linux. 'If we don't have a resolution by midnight on Friday the 13th, the AIX world will be a different place', SCO President and Chief Executive Darl McBride told Reuters News. 'We've basically mapped out what we will do. People will be running AIX without a valid license.'" http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=2915659 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/12/0019209 Red Hat License Challenged "David McNett has noticed an apparent discrepancy between the Red Hat Linux EULA and the GPL. He has written an open letter to the FSF asking for their opinion on the matter. Does Red Hat have the right to "audit your facilities and records" to ensure compliance with their license?" McNett misreads the Red Hat documents. Their contract is for the various services, not the software, and for the services they are entitled to demand whatever concessions they think the market will bear. http://www.livejournal.com/users/nugget/42813.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/12/1214244 Microsoft Flouting DOJ Settlement? "According to the Washington Post, Microsoft is not adhering to the terms of its deal with the DOJ. Specifically, there are allegations that it is "trying to license key pieces of its technology at inflated rates" and "thwarting its antitrust settlement with the federal government". They're charging $100,000 just to see technical info about their communication protocols, and you only get $50,000 back if you decide you don't want to license them. Whoda thunk?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52423-2003Jun12.html?nav=hptoc_tn http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/1234255 No Business Like SCO Business Informationweek has a roundup. News.com has some analysis of the legal case. SCO reiterates their threat to revoke IBM's license. Reader hobsonchoice sends a blurb: "Also more from analysts who saw SCO/Linux code comparisons under NDA. Bill Claybrook, of Aberdeen Group Inc., says SCO changed their story to him about whether they had any "direct evidence" that IBM copied any System V code into Linux. Laura Didio of Yankee Group has answered some detailed questions about her code review process. Lastly Fujitsu Siemens have joined in the debate: they don't think SCO's case is going anywhere." One observer of the SCO case has compiled some notes about Caldera's active participation in the IA-64 project. And look on the bright side: if you follow the school of thought that all publicity is good publicity, at least this suit has gotten Linux mentioned in many places where it normally wouldn't be. http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10300886 http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1016020.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/06/12/HNscorevoke_1.html http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=627647250&fp=16&fpid=0 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/13/1055220751243.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103_2-1016377.html http://lwn.net/Comments/36053/ http://linux.com/pollBooth.pl?section=index&qid=1649&aid=-1 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/1532217 European MP Responds on Software Patents "The Guardian newspaper has a contributed article from the European politician Arlene McCarthy in which she responds to a previous article in the same organ by RMS and Nick Hill on the issue of software patents. If the appalling mixture of misrepresentation, non sequitur, solecism and faux-naivete does not make your blood boil, you are a cold fish indeed." http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,975126,00.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,970294,00.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/1946243 IBM Doesn't Comply With SCO's Deadline "IBM refused to settle with SCO and comply with their deadline, expiring Friday the 13th. "We've got a strong defense case, and we're going to fight it", IBM representative is quoted." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/technology/14LINU.html?ex=1056254400?en=5dd43b69f5d1ef1c&ei=5058&partner=IWON http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/15/1429236 Settling SCOres "The Inquirer is reporting that someone in Germany is claiming to have viewed the SCO-alleged infringing Linux source code without having to sign a NDA. The person gives details about the code that was presented, but the translation-by-software is difficult to follow." The story also includes a link to a human translation; maybe some Slashdot reader can do better. Also in the news is a story about a kernel developer getting uppity with SCO, as well he might. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10013 http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10018 SCO terminates IBM's license "SCO has terminated IBM's license to use Unix code. SCO is filing for an injunction that will require IBM to cease all sale of AIX as well as accrue damages for each day IBM continues to sell AIX." http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/news/articles.asp?guid=%7BB095053D-5814-4FF0-BD33-DC03CE5F4131%7D&newsid=805136133&symb=SCOX&sid=1453151 IBM Responds To SCO: Business As Usual statement from IBM on its decision not to bow to SCO's demand that they stop shipping AIX. In a statement this short, there's not much room for weaselly language, but the even-shorter version is this: "IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated." http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/06/16/2232255.shtml?tid=52 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/16/1940219&tid=88 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/16/2248200 Lobbyists Urge South Australia To Drop Open Source Bill "The Age reports that South Australia has caused eyebrows at the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC) to be raised in concern, with the organisation writing to Premier Mike Rann over a proposed Open Source software bill. The ISC, by its own definition, is a "global coalition of large and small companies committed to advancing the concept that multiple competing software markets should be allowed to develop and flourish unimpeded by government preference or mandate"." http://softwarechoice.org/download_files/DearSouthAustraliaRann.pdf http://www.linuxsa.org.au/oss-bill/ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/17/0253255 SCO Amends Suit, Clarifies "Violations", Triples Damages "This evening on C|Net contains three new items. First, they've upped the damages they're seeking to $3 billion. Second, they claim that by making SMP technology generally available through Linux, IBM violated federal export controls and thus breached their contract with SCO through committing an illegal act. Finally, they elaborate on one specific technology they claim rights to which IBM inserted into the 2.5 kernel series -- the read-copy update memory management features which went in at 2.5.43. Unclear is why SCO thinks they have the rights to RCU, since the technology was originally developed by Sequent in the early 1990s." http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1017965.html http://lse.sourceforge.net/locking/rcupdate.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/17/128249 EU Moves Towards Single European Patent Standard "A European Parliament committee Tuesday moved toward setting the first pan-European standard for software patents, but outlawed the U.S. practice of patenting business methods, such as Amazon's one-click Internet shopping. 'The European law sets the right benchmark rather than the looser U.S. system,' said the director of public policy for Europe at the Business Software Alliance, which represents 20 software companies including Microsoft and Apple. Amazon representatives in Brussels declined to comment on the new European legislation." http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/030617/1229001026_2.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/17/1831233 Using Closed Standards To Pay For Open Ones "EGOVOS analyzes the recently passed South African OSS plan and proposes a great way to fund Open Source education and development until companies comply with open standards. Microsoft pays a 10% penalty until their products comply with open standards. That would be billions of dollars to Open Source to compensate for an unlevel playing field until it is leveled. All the policy guidelines for governments are worth reading. This looks like a workable plan from a credible group." Reader johndiii clarifies: "From what I have been able to see, the strategy document is 'proposed,' not 'recently passed,' and is not yet official policy of the South African government." http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/06/17/1655215.shtml?tid=19 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/18/1431219 Europe, Free Speech, And The Internet "Declan McCullagh responds at CNET.com to a proposal by the Council of Europe to require Internet sites to publish replies by individuals whom the sites criticize. This would apply to all web sites, apparently, including blogs. Per McCullagh, the Council's proposals do not have the force of law, but often serve as the basis for new laws." Imagine the chilling effect if McCullagh's own politechbot and similar sites had to follow such rules. http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1017333.html http://politechbot.com/ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/18/1943251 Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing, Crypto Breaking? "The Swedish Department of Justice has today proposed a bill to be put into effect, if it passes Parliament, on the 1st of January, 2004. It is in accordance to EU directives, but will also criminalize the downloading of material from the Internet without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Furthermore, it will become illegal to break cryptos, circumvent copy protection (mod chips et al), copy books, and as I understand it, use software that is designed to help with any of these tasks, and many other things." An anonymous reader points to an English-language article about this Swedish EUCD proposal, which also mentions a hefty $4 levy on blank digital media such as CD-ROMs. http://justitie.regeringen.se/inenglish/index.htm http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4190.cfm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/18/2328233 The Power Behind the SCO Nuisance "Forbes has a fairly detailed story about the sordid history of The Canopy Group and all the various companies they've sued -- Microsoft (who they beat) and CA (this case is still pending), among them. Before joining Caldera, Darl McBride sued IKON Office Solutions, for whom he worked -- and won. And it also seems that a bunch of Canopy power players also sit on SCO's board of directors. The short summary is, 'these guys are professional litigious bastards -- be exceptionally wary.'" A local user's group is planning a protest for tomorrow. Reader myst564 writes: "After reading all of this SCO press I remembered that SCO once offered up all of their 'Ancient UNIX' (their words, not mine) source to the world while retaining all copyrights (i.e, no OSS license). Interestingly enough it WAS located here but isn't any longer: SCO's Ancient Unix. What's more you can read about the original release here at: Linux Today. I downloaded the source myself way back then but never did anything but delete it! Anyway, check out this comment. It's interesting that this was predicted in 2000!" http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux.html http://uug.byu.edu/pipermail/uug-list/2003-June/004484.html http://www.sco.com/offers/ancient_unix.html http://features.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2000022200405NW http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-02-22-004-05-NW-0003 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/19/1245254 UK Govt Warned: Don't Buy GPL "ZDNet is reporting that a UK IT industry body backed by Microsoft, IBM, Intel, BAE Systems and other high-tech heavyweights has urged the UK government not to commission open-source software, and particularly not software covered by the General Public License. According to Intellect, which lobbies for about 1,000 UK IT companies, the requirement of open-source licences for software funded by the government could have a negative impact on competition for contracts, the quality of the resulting software and even the confidentiality of government departments. In particular, Intellect recommends that the government drop the GNU General Public License (GPL), the licence upon which the GNU/Linux operating system is based, from its list of acceptable default licences for government-funded software, and steer clear of the GPL generally." http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2136285,00.html http://www.intellectuk.org/publications/position_papers/OSS_Intellect_Position.pdf http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/19/197213 My Visit to SCO "I signed the SCO NDA and visited them to discuss their claims against Linux. My essay about it is on the Linux Journal web site. The short version is that SCO's claims are unproven, as indeed I expected would be the case before I went. The amount of information they were willing to show me was extremely limited, and did not by itself prove that their claims were true, nor that their claims were false." Other SCO-bits: Sun is doing their usual foot-in-mouth routine, thinking that two FUDs makes a Solaris purchase, or something like that. IBM is now joining the contact the customers bandwagon. Eric Raymond has been keeping himself busy - here's a story about him. SCO hates BSD, too, but they're not taking it lying down. And of course Cringley has his two cents. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6956&mode=thread&order=0 http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1018669.html http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10103 http://www.opensource.org/sco-vs-ibm.html http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1093&ncid=738&e=9&u=/pcworld/20030620/tc_pcworld/111257 http://www.byte.com/documents/s=8276/byt1055784622054/0616_marshall.html http://www.lemis.com/grog/sco-sontag-16jun2003.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030619.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/20/1829248 Legitimate uses for DeCSS "Interesting article at the Washington Post, which among other things points out that DeCSS does have valid uses, and that the industry's paranoia over DeCSS is overblown." A reasonable mainstream summary of all the DVD related legal hype. Interesting that the libdvdcss folks have never had a bump with the law, but instead DeCSS takes all the brunt even tho nobody uses it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17791-2003Jun20.html?nav=hptoc_tn SCO Protest And Anti-Protest In Provo "On Friday, June 20, the Provo Linux Users Group decided to head on over to SCO's offices and hold a protest; information on the event, including pictures and press coverage, can be found on the PLUG page. Among other things, the protesters claim that SCO employes came out and joined the event holding pre-prepared signs saying things like 'I love software piracy' and 'Try communism - use Linux.'" There are some funny shots linked here (thanks to reader lucif latum). Daddio64 points to the press covereage in the Deseret News and Provo Daily Herald. http://www.kuwan.net/scoAntiProtest/index.html http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510034420,00.html? http://www.harktheherald.com/article.php?sid=86535&mode=thread&order=0 Piracy Deterrence and Education Act Introduced "Last Thursday in the U.S. Congress, H.R. 2517 was quietly introduced and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. The bill, authored by Lamar Smith (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Howard Berman (D-CA), directs the FBI to develop methods of deterring copyright violation through use of peer-to-peer networks, including efforts to facilitate sharing information about suspected violators amongst law enforcement agencies. It also directs the Justice Department to develop programs to educate the American public on why copyright violation is bad. Berman, you may remember, introduce a bill last year that would give the RIAA and MPAA wide latitude to crack suspected violators' computers. " Update: 06/23 17:03 GMT by S: We also covered a variant of this story on Saturday. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.2517: http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/2225871 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/25/190235&tid=123 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/21/2251246&tid=103 Culture Clash: SCO, OpenLinux, Linus And The GPL "SCO has issued a letter saying SCO Linux customers won't be sued. The same does not seem to apply if using a non-SCO distribution such as RedHat." LightSail points to the SCO letter itself, and raises an interesting point: "If they approve the use of 'their' IP in Linux in a single kernel, then the GPL holds that IP SCO allows to be used by a select few must be freely released to any and all. It appears that all Linux users everywhere were just given a license to continued use of Linux even if SCO would win their suit with IBM." And Haikuu writes "eWeek recently posted an interview conducted by e-mail exchange with Linus Torvalds regarding his recent move to the OSDL and the SCO suit." http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=10700830 http://www.caldera.com/scosource/letter_to_partners.html http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1134271,00.asp http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/24/0237200 What is Open Source? "The Inquirer is running an article by Olliance about "What is Open Source?" It appears to be the first of a two-part series for managers about how to engage with the open source community. The writers seem to know their material. Are they on target or have they missed something important? Do PHBs really need to read this sort of introduction to get comfortable with the idea of using Linux and other open source software?" http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10114 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/24/1631240 KaZaA Wants to Be An Official Content Distributor "Detroit News: Nikki Hemming, CEO of KaZaA, says KaZaA wants to be the official online distributor for the entertainment industry. 'Realize that this technology is inexorable, and come to the table,' says Hemming to our friends Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti." http://www.detnews.com/2003/technology/0306/20/technology-197745.htm http://www.business2.com/webguide/0,1660,71314,00.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/25/008200 RMS Cuts Through Some SCO FUD "ZD-Net has a commentary by Richard Stallman about the SCO case against IBM, kind of. It does provide some history on what the GNU organization did to protect itself from such lawsuits. Favorite quote: 'Less evident is the harm it does by inciting simplistic thinking: [Intellectual Property] lumps together diverse laws--copyright law, patent law, trademark law and others--which really have little in common.'" http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2914132,00.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/25/1350256 Public Domain Act Introduced Into Congress "In his blog yesterday Lawrence Lessig said '...Congresswoman Lofgren (D-CA) and Congressman Doolittle (R-CA) have agreed to introduce the Public Domain Enhancement Act into Congress.' Today the Eldred Act website features two press releases announcing the act's introduction, as well as its immediate support by '...the American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, and the Association of Research Libraries...'" http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_06.shtml#001315 http://www.eldred.cc/eablog/000092.html http://www.eldred.cc/eablog/000093.html Hall On Worldwide Open Source Movement "There's an article up on ZDNet summarizing an interesting speech from Jon "Maddog" Hall about non-US open-source, as well as protecting open-source from 'looters' - well worth a read: 'The open-source development community is an international treasure and should be protected as such, said veteran Linux advocate Jon "Maddog" Hall, in a talk in Birmingham, UK, that emphasized the role of open-source software outside the United States.'" http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1020316.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/25/2353220 Law Prof Examines SCO Case "This law professor from the University of California points out weakness in SCO's legal bluster, and further takes a poke at closed software, for those hungry for more SCO scraps. At the end, he references Slashdot for more info ('itself a demonstration of the power of dispersed individuals working together')." http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20030626_chander.html Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass Slate has a piece about Harry Potter and copyright worldwide that is a disguised call for copyright reform. Well written, well argued, extremely good argument, won't be picked up anywhere else. http://slate.msn.com/id/2084960/ More on European Software Patents "An article at ZDNet UK says that the EU bureaucrats aren't even considering the numerous anti-software patenting opinions out there. According to a well-connected lobbyist group, they have determined there will be patents, and the only question is what kind." http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t272-s2136651,00.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/27/1959215 $180 Million for Piracy Conspiracy "According to an AP story printed in the Orlando Sentinel, Steven R. Frazier has been ordered to pay $180 million restitution for attempting to sell a device that would decrypt the satellite signals sent into everyone's homes. In addition to spending the next 5 years in Federal prison, Frazier will have to pay $500 a month for the next 30,000 years, though no one really expects him to live long enough to make all the payments. That value is based on estimated loses DirectTV and Echostar may have incurred had Frazier been able to sell his devices. Being ordered to pay restitution for actual damages is one thing, but paying for some made up number of future damages? Maybe if I catch someone trying to break into my car, I can sue him for the damage he would have caused if he succeeded..." http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-locpayback28062803jun28,0,5719929.story?coll=orl-news-headlines http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/28/181227 Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry "In a surprisingly insightful article entitled Harry Crushes the Hulk, Frank Rich discusses how "Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix" beat out "The Hulk" and goes on to offer some insightfull and interesting comments on demographics, digital media piracy, file sharing and p2p networks, the iTunes store, and more... His conclusion? "[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment — if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/arts/29RICH.html?ex=1057464000&en=628bb9a64032eda2&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/28/2110201 Windows Tech Writer Looks at Linux "Three days ago I accepted Linux into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Windows. It's hard to reconcile because for nearly 20 years I've mostly stayed on the one true Windows path." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3509550&thesection=technology&thesubsection=comment&thesecondsubsecti http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/29/1554201 Engaging with the OSS Community "Olliance has the second of its Open Source articles up at the Inquirer. It's called "Engaging with the Open Source Community (Part Two)", and it explains the different levels of involvement that companies can have with Open Source. More education for managers, and an outline of a corporate process for approaching adoption and deployment of Linux and other Open Source software." http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10222 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/29/1913235 EU Parliament to Vote on New Patent Rules "The Register has an article discussing the implications to the open source community and small software businesses of the new software patent law to be voted on tomorrow by the EU parliament. According to the article, it is very likely the new patent law will be accepted despite its grave consequences." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/31472.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/30/002211 TV Brick - Open Source TV Streaming? "Nexedi has released the TV Brick - an open source-based box for TV capture and streaming over the Internet. Primarily targeted towards Japanese families living in France (seeing that popular Japanese channels like Yomiuri TV and NHK Sogo are unavailable outside Japan), the idea is that is you plug one of these boxes to a TV antenna and a broadband connection in Japan, and the other to a broadband plug and a TV in France; instant 'magic' happens and all the goodness of Japanese TV is in your living room." We also covered the OpenBrick project a few months back. http://www.nexedi.com/en/news/pr2 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/20/226254&tid=137 Bill Gates on Linux "USA Today had an interview with Bill Gates on june the 30th. Gates seems to be considering Linux as a passing thru competition just like OS/2., and That Microsoft are the ones that keep pushing new technologies." http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-06-29-gates-linux_x.htm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/01/1440202 OpenContent Closes Its Doors "After five years of pioneering the application of open source principles to stuff other than software, OpenContent is closing down. Project Lead David Wiley provides a rationale for the closing on the website, as well as a brief overview of the projects' successes. Wiley has joined Creative Commons as Project Lead for Educational Licensing." http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/3733 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/01/1247224 A Critical Look at Trusted Computing "After just attending a two-week summer program on the theoretical foundations of security (one of the speakers was from Microsoft research), I have been interested in trying to find out if the "trusted computing" initiative was still alive. I got my answer today in the New York Times from an article that was fortunately rather critical of the concept." http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/activities/summerschool/summer03/ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/technology/30SECU.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/01/019236 EFF Ad Campaign On File Swapping (badri, can we see some shots ?) "The Electronic Frontier Foundation is launching an ad campaign to counter the RIAA's lawsuits about file swapping. There are more details available at the File Sharing: It's Music To Our Ears subsite." The press release kicking off this campaign says that "EFF's Let the Music Play campaign provides alternatives to the RIAA's litigation barrage, details EFF's efforts to defend peer-to-peer file sharing, and makes it easy for individuals to write members of Congress." http://www.eff.org/share http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030630_eff_pr.php http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/30/1652250 Digital Shoplifting From Bookstores? "According to a report from Tokyo via IOL, Japanese publishers have launched a campaign to stop 'digital shoplifters.' These 'digital shoplifters' are using cellphones to photograph magazine pages in bookstores, rather than buying them. 'Digital shoplifting is becoming a big problem as camera-equipped mobile handsets are spreading fast and their quality is improving greatly,' said Kenji Takahashi, an official at the Japan Magazine Publishers Association. Will entry into a bookstore soon include a 'cell-phone patdown?'" http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=qw1056959460701B215 Linus Torvalds about SCO, IP, MS and Transmeta " San Jose Mercury News has an interview with Linus. He talks about about SCO vs IBM and gives his opinion on Microsoft. He also shed light on his decision to leave chip maker Transmeta for a Linux corporate software consortium, the Open Source Development Lab." http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/6238207.htm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/05/1728201 Estonia: Where the Internet is a Human Right "The Christian Science Monitor reports on technological change in Estonia, where an enlightened post-Soviet era government believes the Internet is essential for life in the 21st century and backs that up with legislation declaring Internet access is a human right. Estonia is a country where hot, running water was a luxury a decade ago. It's now a place where farmers have broadband Internet, 80% of the people use online banking, Internet usage and broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe, and the government conducts most business (meetings, votes, document reviews, etc.) virtually through a system of networked computers. Not bad for a country that only 10 years ago was a crumbling, bankrupt mess with a network infrastructure to match." http://csmonitor.com/2003/0701/p07s01-woeu.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/06/1748224&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=95 Freenet Creator Debates RIAA "Over at CNET News.com, there's a good coverage of a debate between Ian Clarke of Freenet and Matt Oppenheim of the RIAA." In discussing whether it's "legal and moral to create and use Freenet", which is "a radically decentralized network of file-sharing nodes tied together with strong encryption", the RIAA's Oppenheim suggests: "Other than the fact that most infringers do not like to use Freenet because it is too clunky for them to get their quick hit of free music, it is no more of a threat than any of the popular P2P services." http://news.com.com/2010-1027_3-1023325.html?tag=fd_nc_1 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/07/1733230 SCO Taking Linux Discussion To Japan "EETimes is carrying a new story about our good friend Darl McBride, CEO of SCO. His latest escapades include a trip to Japan in response to the CE Linux Forum initiative undertaken by several big-name Japanese tech firms such as Sony and Toshiba. He's putting his famous tainted code dog-and-pony show on parade, trying to influence some of the major CELF founders." http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20030703S0026 http://www.celinuxforum.org/PressRelease/pr02.htm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/07/1914248 9th Circuit Court Finds 'Thumbnailing' Fair Use "A photographer named Leslie Kelly had sued Arriba Soft Corporation for infringing his copyrights to photos when they made thumbnails of his pictures and stored them in a public image search engine. Today the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court's ruling that making these thumbnail copies of images for the search engine was 'fair use.' Since the applicability of fair-use defenses to copyright infringement touches on all kinds of common uses of the Internet as well as rulemaking related to the scope of the DMCA, this decision will probably have an effect on the discussion. (Note that this case was decided by a 3-judge panel and thus isn't binding precedent.)" Note that the court also reversed in part the lower court's ruling, specifically saying that the lower court should not have ruled on "whether the display of the larger image is a violation of Kelly's exclusive right to publically display his works." http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/ca9/newopinions.nsf/8E22982657C96BE188256D5C00518BF5/$file/0055521oop.pdf?openelement http://www.copyright.gov/1201/ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/07/2141216 Linux vs. SCO: The Decision Matrix - Check this out "Haven't seen this here yet, though I may have missed it. Anyway... A group of Australian techies have put together an analysis matrix of the likelyhood of each SCO Unix claim being true, and what outcome would most likely result if so. Puts a lot of the various recent suppositions in one handy place." http://www.cybersource.com.au/users/conz/linux_vs_sco_matrix.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/08/182211 Open Source Law "The U.S. Supreme Court just announced its refusal to review the 5th Circuit's en banc decision that there can be no copyright of privately authored laws offered to U.S. governmental bodies for adoption. The model law itself may be copyrighted, but once it's adopted, the law must be open source. The entire case is laid out on Peter Veeck's page." Slashdot touched on this before, but never really covered this dispute in depth. Here's a nice legal summary of the case. http://regionalweb.texoma.net/cr/filings.htm http://www.gtwassociates.com/answers/veeck.htm http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/08/204225 Is Law Copyrighted? "There's an interesting tidbit here at the San Diego Union-Tribune about a guy who posted his local (Denison, TX) building code on the internet and prompty got nasty-grams from copyright lawyers at the Southern Building Code Congress International Inc. The bill in question was copyrighted by the group before it was sent to the local legislature, so the wording of the law belongs to them. So far, two Federal courts agree with the group. In the article, they seem to be taking the Microsoft-esque view of 'Who would write these things for free? Look at all the good it's done!'" And since many laws are written wholly by groups composed of non-legislators (the article lists a few), disseminating them on the Internet is a misdeed? http://www.uniontrib.com/news/uniontrib/sun/news/news_1n13own.html Open Source Organization Models Discussed "Harvard Business School has an article up discussing The Organizational Model for Open Source. It has some good points, and I think it sums up what many of us know, but haven't quite been able to put into words yet: 'People are intimately aware of the fact that too much structure will disenfranchise the very people who make the most successful open source projects possible.'" http://workingknowledge.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=3582&t=technology OSCON Panel: SCO Lawsuit About the Money "Just when you had heard enough, the ongoing controversy about SCO vs. Linux has popped up over at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON). According to Eweek's story, the panelists agreed that SCO is targeting companies like IBM in an attempt to raise cash. Most importantly: "if a company is not after money, suing is not the way to go."" http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1188919,00.asp http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/10/1831258 Cringely On Electronic Tapping "Robert X. Cringely, the PBS one, has an editorial discussing electronic wire-tapping and the Big Brother concerns. There isn't any new information in the article, but he does a nice summation of the state of law enforcement today. This may be a good article to show your family, friends and congressmen." http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030710.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/11/1423206 Evangelizing OSS in the Caribbean "Here is an article on NewsForge regarding evangelizing OSS in the Caribbean. I'm wondering what others think of the impact efforts like this may have on software development jobs in the US. Is IT still a viable field to get into and if so will it last?" http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/07/10/2356241 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/12/1635252 How to Legally Infuriate the RIAA? " if the facts are correct in this article, we're talking about a price point that makes streaming radio extremely inexpensive. There's a lot of worthless spite in this article, but if you can look past that, you might see something worth thinking about." http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10452 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/13/1348202&mode=thread&tid=149&tid=99 Napster, Audio Fingerprinting, and the Future of P2P "Napster founder Sean Fanning is poised for a comeback, seems the now 22 year old Fanning has developed technology which creates "audio fingerprinting" of individual tracks and compares them against fingerprints in his firm's database to determine legality. A fee may be set and collected on a copyrighted track by its rightful owner. Fanning is actively recruiting industry support as well as pushing the idea to p2p services such as kazaa and grokster. " This isn't exactly new technology, but it's still interesting to see what Fanning is up to these days besides movie cameos. http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la-fi-fanning7jul07§ion=/printstory http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/13/1428219 DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe "The number of European countries enacting their ignorance of the sad experiences from Four Years under the DMCA has just risen to 5, as the Upper House (Bundesrat, incidentally) of the German Parliament on Friday failed to veto (sorry, some press releases are only available in heavily spin-doctored German Legalese at this point in time) and is hence considered to have consented to the adoption by the Lower House (Bundestag) of a federal law implementing the dreaded DMCA's European sibling known as EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC." http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030102_dmca_unintended_consequences.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/14/0229253 DoJ's 'Anti-Piracy' Lawyers answer questions.... interesting. they are the 'point people' for Federal criminal actions against online file-traders and software misapproprators. They know some Slashdot readers may have little sympathy for what they do all day. Be that as it may, this is a great chance to understand what it's like on the enforcement side of the intellectual property coin. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/14/1325229 Linus says Linux IP is sound. "In an interview with CRN, Linus Torvalds says he's confident there won't be any IP problems discovered in Linux. In fact, Torvalds, says he was extra careful with issues like the IBM Read Copy Update code." http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/breakingnews.asp?ArticleID=43276 Freenet 0.5.2 Released - check this out. "With the RIAA roaring to grab peer-to-peer users by their IP addresses, Freenet - fully anonymized production and consumption of content - is gaining renewed attention. Articles in New Scientist, ZDNet UK, Wired and CNET (and here) set a somewhat typical context for Freenets major release 0.52. Significant performance improvements through NIO-based messaging, probabilistic caching etc. should provide increased rest to Chinese dissidents, but may finally wake-up the RIAA's Matt Oppenheim..." http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/062503.asp http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993950 http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0%2C%2Ct269-s2137474%2C00.html http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59448,00.html http://news.com.com/2100-1029-1023735.html http://news.com.com/2010-1071-1023325.html http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffreenet-china.org%2F&lp=zh_en&tt=url http://news.com.com/2010-1071-1023325.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/16/1931225 House Bill to Make File-Sharing an Automatic Felony "Wired news has an article about a new bill that would make it a felony to upload a file to a P2P network." EFF has a copy of the bill online. Conyers and Berman both get over a quarter of their campaign funding from Hollywood, according to opensecrets.org. http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/20030716_conyer-berman.php http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/17/1250203 Seminar On Details Of The GPL And Related Licenses "Given the recent confusion about LGPL on slashdot, and the concern it raised for those convincing corporate legal departments to adopt to Free Software, perhaps your readers might be interested in FSF's legal seminar on the GPL and related licenses. The first one is in Silicon Valley, and if it is successful, we hope to hold others in the next 8 months in New York City and Tokyo." Since the FSF and the GNU project have long created and fought for software that's shareable, Free, and Not UNIX, what's taught at these seminars will probably differ sharply from what you can hear at next Monday's SCO conference call on the "IBM lawsuit, UNIX Ownership and Copyrights." http://patron.fsf.org/course-offering.html http://ir.sco.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=114097 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/18/1835252 Microsoft Names Linux as Number 2 Risk "Microsoft has officially moved Linux up to the Number 2 Risk to the company (With Economic Environment at No. 1). Bill Gates has taken the threat very seriously, and has identified Linux and non-commercial software as 'out there and very pervasive.' In response, Microsoft has dropped the price of Windows CE and opened the embedded OS to developers. This will not only allow developers to view and modify CE, but also distribute software incorporated to the modified code." http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=12800942 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/19/1321257 Deep Linking Legal in Germany "German news site Heise Online reports a recent decision of the Bundesgerichtshof, the highest court in Germany: Deep linking is not illegal. Newspaper company Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt had sued the news search engine Paperboy for deep linking to their articles. According to the Bundesgerichtshof, the public interest in a well-working Internet takes precedence over the commercial interests of the newspaper company, even if the advertizing of the company is bypassed. The Bundesgerichtshof has clarified that users can access any page if they know the URL, and deep linking is just a technical simplification for entering the URL manually. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/20/1451239 SCO Awarded UNIX Copyright Regs, McBride Interview "It seems that SCO is continuing to build up its case for world domination, as today it was awarded U.S. copyright registrations for UNIX System V source code by the U.S. Copyright Office. Shares are up 20%, Novell is nowhere to be found, and SCO is releasing binary, run-only Linux licensing. You can read all about it over in their press release." C|Net is also running an interview with McBride. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030721/lam075_1.html http://news.com.com/1601-2-1027557.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/21/1516240 Embarrassing Governments Into Adopting Open Source "An effort is currently underway to embarrass the Australian Federal Government into adopting open source software. As this story explains, the Australian Democrats have put questions on notice in Parliament that will require all government ministers to disclose how much money their departments spend on Microsoft products each year. The idea is to force open source issues to the fore by showing just how much money Microsoft receives from the government. It could be a smart approach - the average taxpayer knows little or nothing about OSS, but will rapidly form and express vocal opinions about the government wasting money. The article also mentions that a bill may be introduced to Federal Parliament to mandate the consideration of open source solutions (you may remember this story about an Australian state trying to introduce similar legislation). Some quotes from the article: "What the country doesn't need is to be tied into a profit-maximising licensing system, and the way to combat that is to get government to break out of the paradigm." On the other hand, the (right wing) Liberal Party criticises suggestions that use of open source should be compulsory as "hi-tech affirmative action."" http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6788724%255E15306,00.html http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/17/0253255&tid=185 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/22/0433236 SCO Extorting Unixware Licenses to Linux Users? SCO will sell you Unixware if you want to "Legitimize" your usage of Linux at your company. If you buy the license, you will be held blameless for your transgressions against SCO! Pricing has yet to be determined for the special licenses, but I suspect that for any value greater than zero, there are going to be a fair number of angry users. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1200014,00.asp ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 23 23:25:01 2003 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:55:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Composers and Copyright In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030723175501.58141.qmail@web13609.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all On the interpreation of 52(j)(ii) there is a karnata high court decision which supports the interpreation provide by dev. The case is Gramophone Co. of India Ltd. Vs. Mars Recording Pvt. Ltd. and I am including the text of the decision. I dont know if this case has been appealed against but as per the deision. It wa held that "The assignment of copyright can be obtained by written agreement as provided under Section 19. Licence or consent can be obtained under Section 30 of the Act. If the licence or consent is obtained under Section 30, naturally the licencee is exempted from proceeding against him for infringement of copyright. In the event such licence or consent is not given, even after compliance of the requirement of Section 52 (1) (j) (ii) within 15 days, I am of the opinion that the licence is deemed to have been granted and the person producing the cassette after the expiry of 15 days is not said to have infringed copyright. If Section 52 (j) (i) & (ii) arc read conjointly, Section 52 (j) (ii) becomes redundant and such narrow interpretation cannot be given to defeat the very object and purpose of Section 52 (1) (j) (ii). Lawrence =========== IN THE HIGH COURT OF KARNATAKA AT BANGALORE M.F.A. No. 5491/98 Decided On: 31.08.1999 Appellants: Gramophone Co. of India Ltd. Vs. Respondent: Mars Recording Pvt. Ltd. and Ors. Hon'ble Judges: M.P. Chinnappa, J. Counsels: For Appellant/Petitioner/Plaintiff: K.C. Shivasubramanian, Adv. For Respondents/Defendant: Rajesh Chandar Kumar, Adv. for Kiran S. Javali, Adv. Subject: Intellectual Property Rights Catch Words: Artist, Artistic Work, Assignment, Assignor, Cinematograph Film, Colour, Consent, Copy, Copying, Copyright, Copyright Board, Damage, Delivery, Design, Despatch, Duration, Examination, Exception, Exclusive Right, Film, Good, Grant, Infringement, Infringing, Infringing Copy, Law Report, Letter, Licence, Literary Work, Lyric, Music, Musical Work, Musician, Name, Object, Original, Owner, Prescribed, Property, Protected, Publish, Published, Registrar, Remedies, Remedy, Report, Reproduction, Royalty, Sale, Servant, Similar, Singer, Song, Sound Recording, Sound Track, Transmission, Valid, Work, Works Withheld from Public Acts/Rules/Orders: Copyright Act, 1957 - Sections 18, 19, 20, 30, 51, 52 and 52(1); Copyright Rules - Rule 21 Cases Referred: Gramophone Company Of India Ltd. v. Super Cassette Industries Ltd, 1996 PTC 252; The Gramophone Company of India Limited v. Super Cassette Industries Ltd., 1999 PTC 2 (Del) Disposition: Appeal dismissed JUDGMENT M.P. Chinnapa, J. 1. The brief facts of the case are that the respondent No. 1 on 16.05.1998 notified its intention to record 1000 numbers of each audio cassette of three songs viz. 'Kallusak-karc Kolliro', 'maduve maduve maduve' and 'chinnada hadugalu' and sent inlay cards of the above 3 cassettes along with 3 demand drafts of Rs. 1,500/ each towards royalty payable in favour of the copy right owner the appellant herein. The respondent No. 1 also after waiting for 15 days proceeded to sound record audio cassettes of the 3 above titled songs and released the same in the open market and the same was circulated throughout Karnataka State despite the appellant's refusal to grant licence/consent to do the same. Subsequently as the respondent apprehended that all the cassettes would be seized it filed a suit in O.S. 4792/98 on the file of the VIII Addl. City Civil Judge, Bangalore, along with an application under Order 39 Rules 1 & 2 CPC for temporary injunction restraining the defendants, their agents, representatives, works officers or any person or persons claiming under them from seizing the 1st respondent's 3 above tilled audio music cassettes. Thereafter, the appellant appeared and filed objections contending inter alia that through several agreements acquired copyright in the literary, dramatic, musical and artistic (sound trace) works, relating to various Kannada films and they are the owners of original plate in respect of the films mentioned therein and the respondent also is engaged in the business of manufacture of records, cassettes and the like. The appellant refused to give consent /licence keeping the various aspects in mind and the same was informed to respondent No. 1 by letter dt. 8.6.98. Inspite of refusal, the 1st respondent proceeded to re-record the release cassette which is a clear infringement of the appellant's copyright on the above said audio cassettes. The appellant also filed criminal complaint under the Copyright Act and Rules for seizure of articles, machines, tapes, cassettes, coverings, etc. against the 1st respondent in C.C. No. 165/96 earlier and the appellant has taken custody of the goods. Further, the appellant also moved the Calcutta High Court against the 1st respondent in which injunction relief was granted exparte but this was suppressed by the 1st respondent, etc. After hearing both sides the learned Court allowed I.A.I, and granted temporary injunction as prayed for. Being aggrieved by the said order dl. 2.9.98 the 1st defendant preferred this appeal. 2. Heard the learned advocates appearing for the respective parties. 3. From a perusal of the pleadings and having heard the arguments advanced by both sides and in the light of the findings of the Court below, the only question that arises for consideration is: Whether the finding of the Court below that Section 52 (j) disjuncts Section 52 (j) (i) & (ii) calls for interference? 4. Before considering this question, it is necessary to refer to the admitted facts in this case which are: the appellant is engaged inter alia in the manufacture and sales of records, cassettes, discs and other sound recording system. A substantial portion of the appellant's business consists of the manufacture and sale of cassettes, records and discs relating to film music from the original sound track. The said original sound track forms part of the cinematograph films. It is also not in dispute that the appellant by several agreements acquired copyright in the literary, dramatic and musical works relating to various Kannada films and they are the owners of the original plate in respect of the films referred to by the appellant in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957, apart from various other Kannada and other language musical works. It is also not in dispute that the 1st respondent is also engaged in the business of manufacture of records, cassettes and the like. The 1st respondent during the course of its business wanted to sound record the cassettes of the following 3 films, viz. 'Kallusakkare Kolliro', 'maduve maduvc maduve' and 'chinnada hadugalu' admittedly for which the copyright vests with the appellant. It is also hot in dispute that the respondent No. 1 on 16.05.1998 notified its intention to record 1000 numbers of each audio cassette of the above three titled songs and also sent inlay cards of the above 3 cassettes along with 3 demand drafts of Rs. 1,500/ each towards royalty payable in favour of the copy right owner the appellant herein. The respondent No. 1 also after waiting for 15 days proceeded to sound record audio cassettes of the 3 above titled songs and released the same in the open market and the same was circulated throughout Karnataka State despite the appellant's refusal to grant licence/consent to do the same. In view of this the question is whether the respondent ought to have waited for the consent of the appellant to record the cassettes after having complied with Section 52 (j) (ii) of the Act. 5. The learned counsel for the appellant has vehemently argued that the finding of the learned Court below that Section 52 (j) (i) & (ii) shall be read disjunctively is contrary to the intention of the legislature. On the other hand, he contended that both the sections should be read co-jointly to give meaning and purpose to the Act. To substantiate his argument he has drawn my attention to certain provisions of law which are necessary to be quoted herein. At the very outset he submitted that Section 2 (y) of the Act is relevant which reads: "work" means any of the following works, namely:- (i) a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work; (ii) a cinematograph film; (iii) a (sound recording); As far as this case is concerned, it is based on the work of sound recording. He has also further drawn my attention to Section 13 which deals with 'Works in which copyright subsists' Literary and musical works are involved in this section. Section 18 is yet another important section in this case which deals with 'Assignment of copyright'. From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 23 23:29:34 2003 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:59:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Fantastic stuff In-Reply-To: <20030723173238.35513.qmail@web12308.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030723175934.53320.qmail@web13604.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all I have just had a chance to go through the absoultely terrific resource that Karim has created. I think it is an invaluable resource for those of us on the list. Just wanted to thank karim on behalf of the list for the great work, and highly recomend that you post it on to other lists because I think it will be of great value to a whole host of people Lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com From kream77 at yahoo.com Thu Jul 24 10:12:29 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 05:42:29 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] A critical SCO point in the SCO v. Linux case Message-ID: <20030724044229.43448.qmail@web12305.mail.yahoo.com> As always, from slashdot. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=03/07/23/1741234&cid=6514423 SCO has said publicly that it no specific section of Linux can be removed or re-written to make it "clean". Their argument is that once SCO's IP was copied into the Linux kernel, later versions of Linux-- all of it-- became a "derivative work" and thus the entire kernel is now "SCO IP". The only way they feel you could "clean" Linux is to revert to kernel 2.2 and restart development from there, but none of the existing developers or even Linux users could work on development because they've already been tainted-- all current Linux users have already seen the secret SCO IP in Linux kernels they're using. Any code created by current Linux developers or users would therefore be written with knowledge of SCO's super-duper technology, so SCO says that any code written by current Linux developers or users would therefore be "SCO IP" from the day it is born because it is a derivative work. And so they would still have to sue you for licensing fees over it, even though you just wrote it five minutes ago. So, SCO says, we're letting you all off the hook. Since the only way to "clean" Linux development would eventually kill it completely (since no existing Linux developers or Linux users could work on a clean version), we'll be generous and let Linux live, and just charge license fees instead. Now I've seen other /. posters say "So what if SCO doesn't believe it's clean, if we remove the offending code, it will be clean and then they'll have no claim." But they don't have any claim now; by most peoples' standards, they're making fraudulent claims to manipulate their stock price.Why does everyone think that if we remove some code from Linux and send a nice card to SCO saying that's what we've done, SCO will sit down and say "Okay, you're clean now. Thanks, Linux people!" and then withdraw their case? ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ From sunil at mahiti.org Fri Jul 25 16:11:51 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 25 Jul 2003 16:11:51 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Elderly Are Targets in Internet Subpoenas Message-ID: <1059129711.3729.2.camel@mahitilaptop.mahitinet> http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DOWNLOADING_MUSIC?SITE=OHCLE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Elderly Are Targets in Internet Subpoenas By TED BRIDIS AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Move over, college kids. Grandparents and roommates may be the first ones to pay for downloading songs on the Internet. The music industry's earliest subpoenas, issued as part of a high-stakes campaign to cripple online piracy by suing some of music's biggest fans, are aimed at a surprisingly eclectic group: a grandfather, an unsuspecting dad and an apartment roommate. "Within five minutes, if I can get hold of her, this will come to an end," said Gordon Pate of Dana Point, Calif., when told by The Associated Press that a federal subpoena had been issued over his daughter's music downloads. The legal papers required an Internet provider, Comcast Cable Communications Inc., to hand over Pate's name and address. Pate, 67, confirmed that his 23-year-old daughter, Leah Pate, had installed file-sharing software using an account cited on the subpoena. But he said his daughter would stop immediately and the family did not know using such software could result in a stern warning, expensive lawsuit or even criminal prosecutior "There's no way either us or our daughter would do anything we knew to be illegal," Pate said, promising to remove the software quickly. "I don't think anybody knew this was illegal, just a way to get some music." The president of the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the largest music labels, said lawyers will pursue downloaders regardless of personal circumstances because it would deter other Internet users. "The idea really is not to be selective, to let people know that if they're offering a substantial number of files for others to copy, they are at risk," Cary Sherman said. "It doesn't matter who they are." Over the coming months this may be the Internet's equivalent of shock and awe, the stunning discovery by music fans across America that copyright lawyers can pierce the presumed anonymity of file-sharing, even for computer users hiding behind nicknames such as "hottdude0587" or "bluemonkey13." In Charleston, W.Va., college student Amy Boggs said she quickly deleted more than 1,400 music files on her computer after the AP told her she was the target of a subpoena. Boggs said she sometimes downloaded dozens of songs on any given day, including ones by Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, Incubus and Busta Rhymes. Since Boggs used her roommates' Internet account, the roommates' name and address were being turned over to music industry lawyers. "This scares me so bad I never want to download anything again," said Boggs, who turned 22 on Thursday. "I never thought this would happen. There are millions of people out there doing this." In homes where parents or grandparents may not closely monitor the family's Internet use, the news could be especially surprising. A defendant's liability can depend on their age and whether anyone else knew about the music downloads. Bob Barnes, a 50-year-old grandfather in Fresno, Calif., and the target of a subpoena, acknowledged sharing "several hundred" music files. He said he used the Internet to download hard-to-find recordings of European artists because he was unsatisfied with modern American artists and grew tired of buying CDs without the chance to listen to them first. "If you don't like it, you can't take it back," said Barnes, who runs a small video production company with his wife from their three-bedroom home. "You have all your little blonde, blue-eyed clones. There's no originality." Citing the numeric Internet addresses of music downloaders, the RIAA has said it can only track users by comparing those addresses against subscriber records held by Internet providers. But the AP used those addresses and other details culled from subpoenas and was able to locate some Internet users who are among the music industry's earliest targets. Pate was wavering whether to call the RIAA to negotiate a settlement. "Should I call a lawyer?" he wondered. The RIAA's president was not sure what advice to offer because he never imagined downloaders could be identified until Internet providers turned over subscriber records, as the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires them to do. "It's not a scenario we had truthfully envisaged," Sherman said. "If somebody wants to settle before a lawsuit is filed it would be fine to call us, but it's really not clear how we're going to perceive this." The association has issued at least 911 subpoenas so far, according to court records. Lawyers have said they expect to file at least several hundred lawsuits within eight weeks, and copyright laws allow for damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song. The AP tracked targets of subpoenas to neighborhoods in Boston; Chicago; St. Louis; San Francisco; New York and Ann Arbor, Mich. Outside legal experts urged the music industry to carefully select targets for its earliest lawsuits. Several lawyers said they were doubtful the RIAA ultimately will choose to sue computer users like the Pate family. "If they end up picking on individuals who are perceived to be grandmothers or junior high students who have only downloaded in isolated incidents, they run the risk of a backlash," said Christopher Caldwell, a lawyer in Los Angeles who previously worked with major studios and the Motion Picture Association of America. The recording industry said Pate's daughter was offering songs by Billy Idol, Missy Elliot, Duran Duran, Def Leppard and other artists. Pate said that he never personally downloaded music and that he so zealously respects copyrights that he does not videotape movies off cable television channels. Barnes, who used the Napster service until the music industry shut it down, said he rarely uses file-sharing software these days unless his grandson visits. The RIAA found songs on his computer by Marvin Gaye, Savage Garden, Berlin, the Eagles, Dire Straits and others. Barnes expressed some concern about a possible lawsuit but was confident that "more likely they will probably come out with a cease and desist order" to stop him sharing music files on the Internet. "I think they're trying to scare people," Barnes said. -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Jul 28 23:46:15 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (jeebesh at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 20:16:15 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] [Fwd: Citizen's Guide To The Airwaves] Message-ID: <61734.213.187.170.114.1059416175.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Citizen's Guide To The Airwaves From: "geert lovink" Date: Mon, July 28, 2003 12:53 am To: "Nettime-l" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now Available! Citizen's Guide To The Airwaves New America Foundation July 1, 2003 The Citizen's Guide to the Airwaves is the New America Foundation’s attempt to educate the public about the tremendous value, government mismanagement, and impending giveaway of the nation’s airwaves - the most valuable natural resource of the information economy. The publications frame the spectrum debate in a language new to the policy world, using clear, graphic illustrations to depict the economic, social and political facets of spectrum policy. The Citizen's Guide (viewable thumbnails below) includes a two-sided, 11” x 38” color poster and a 52-page Explanation Report. The poster’s front side is a visual “map” of the spectrum; the backside is a nine-panel overview of the U.S. spectrum policy debate. Downloadable PDF versions of the Citizen’s Guide poster and report are available free of charge. Printed versions of the poster are available in two formats, either accordion-folded for easy reading ($10) or flat for hanging ($12). Additional copies may be ordered for a reduced price. The explanatory report, printed and bound on heavy stock, glossy paper, accompanies the poster at no additional charge. SPECTRUM POLICY PROGRAM, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION In the emerging information economy, the most valuable publicly owned asset may well be the electromagnetic spectrum – or the “airwaves.” Indeed, recent auctions suggest that the spectrum has a market value exceeding $500 billion. Yet our nation’s antiquated spectrum policies sacrifice significant public revenues and inhibit the rapid deployment of wireless broadband access. To promote a more fair and efficient allocation of the airwaves, New America’s Spectrum Policy Program advocates requiring commercial licensees to pay fair market value for their use of the spectrum, and opposes efforts to privatize the airwaves. The revenues from such auctions can best be used to meet civic and educational needs. The Program also promotes greater shared citizen access to the airwaves – particularly for wireless broadband networking with unlicensed consumer devices – and the protection of the Internet’s open and unmediated end-to-end architecture. In these and other ways, New America seeks to help preserve, update, and expand the public interest obligations of our nation’s communications infrastructure in the digital era. New America’s Spectrum Policy Program currently has three primary components: Spectrum Policy Reform. Our nation’s current spectrum allocation policies – based on rigid regulation and zero-cost use by most incumbent license holders – have created the worst possible situation: an artificial spectrum scarcity that inhibits the rapid deployment of wireless broadband services, the sacrifice of tens of billions of dollars in public revenue, reduced innovation and competition, constrained citizen access to the airwaves, and a steady erosion of the civic, educational, and other public interest obligations of broadcasters and other licensees. To overcome these vexing problems, New America develops and promotes a range of market-based policies that ensure that all commercial users compensate the public for their exclusive and limited-term licenses, while simultaneously opening more of the spectrum to sharing by individuals using Wi-Fi and other unlicensed wireless devices. The Program also puts forth innovative proposals for earmarking spectrum revenues for new public investments to fulfill the public interest obligations of broadcasters. These unmet needs include free airtime for federal candidates, quality non-commercial programming, and innovative educational content and software. Since its inception in January 2001, New America’s Spectrum Policy Program has produced four major reports and more than a dozen working papers and issue briefs; published numerous articles in the mainstream press; organized over 15 high-profile public events; and published a major book. In addition, Program Director Michael Calabrese has testified frequently on Capitol Hill and before the FCC and the Commerce Department on a wide range of spectrum-related issues. A Citizen's Chart of the Spectrum. Spectrum politics is a classic case of special interest politics. Rights to use spectrum are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, yet the press, public, and even most lawmakers have only a vague understanding of how spectrum allocation policy works and of the full potential of emerging wireless technologies. Nor does the majority of the public understand the tremendous “opportunity loss” resulting from the current mismanagement of the airwaves - for taxpayers and consumers alike. Indeed, the U.S. government’s official spectrum chart is virtually indecipherable to the average citizen. To remedy this problem, New America Senior Research Fellow J.H. Snider - working with a team of leading graphic designers and policy experts - produced a “Citizen’s Chart of the Spectrum” that graphically illustrates the most important dimensions of spectrum policy and allocation. It will be released in May 2003. Protecting the Information Commons. New America also works to ensure that the Internet’s architecture and intellectual property laws continue to protect the public’s interest in free speech, consumer rights, privacy, and open competitive access. A critical issue is whether the public spaces made possible by the Internet will be re-regulated to maximize the commercial interests of dominant intellectual property owners – or whether they will protect and expand the vital “information commons” that enables individual citizens to freely communicate, create, and control content. Current attempts to privatize the nation’s public communications infrastructure and its content include the removal of common carrier obligations for Internet access and encroachments upon traditional copyright principles of fair use. Among the policy initiatives aimed at expanding the information commons, the Program advocates universal broadband access premised on common carriage and a choice of Internet service providers. The Program also advocates new limits on copyright and trademark law so that the public domain and creativity may continue to flourish in the digital future. In 2002 the Program published a series of reports on the information commons and a major book – Silent Theft, by David Bollier – that popularized the fact that the American people are the rightful owners of a wide range of public assets, and that highlighted new policies for safeguarding the public’s rights to these assets. # 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 From alforum at vsnl.net Tue Jul 29 07:22:01 2003 From: alforum at vsnl.net (alforum at vsnl.net) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 20:52:01 -0500 (GMT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Talk on Trips/ WTO Message-ID: <200307290152.h6T1q1R12408@webmail2.vsnl.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20030728/ce4ce764/attachment.pl From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jul 29 10:07:57 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 29 Jul 2003 10:07:57 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Enter Snapster, Exit RIAA Message-ID: <1059453477.1838.18.camel@mahitilaptop.mahitinet> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/24/16249/9477 Date: 28 Jul 2003 22:54:35 +0530 Enter Snapster, Exit RIAA (MLP) By WetherMan Sat Jul 26th, 2003 at 04:15:56 AM EST Music Introducing Snapster. In a recent article on pbs.org, Robert Cringely, introduces Snapster, an idea that has the potential to revolutionize music distribution as we know it. Snapster is fundamentally an application of shared ownership to music. Here it is in a nutshell: 1. Snapster buys a large quantity of CD's 2. Snapster goes public, using methods he details to gain a large shareholder base. 3. Snapster founds "Snapster Downloads", which offers the above CD's at say .05c/song and .50c/album. Snapster stockholders are paying for the ability to download these cd's.. because.. and here's the catch, they're already partial owner's as stockholders. Sound too good to be true? There are some serious questions that need to be answered before a system like this ever gets off the ground. What would keep the RIAA from pushing legislation that bans fractional ownership? Can the RIAA stop this by installing license agreements on their CD's that specifically restrict this sort of partial owner agreement? What happens if the company incorporates outside US borders? This is an idea that deserves a second look, maybe it really has the potential to change the face of music distribution as we know it -- -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From sunil at mahiti.org Wed Jul 30 09:46:31 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 30 Jul 2003 09:46:31 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] RIAA will take 2191.78 years to sue everyone Message-ID: <1059538591.1821.2.camel@mahitilaptop.mahitinet> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10733 Sum hope By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 29 July 2003, 10:31 READER MICHAELA STEPHENS says that if the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is right and that 60 million US folk are file sharing, it's going to take the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) a mighty long time to get round to them all. She said: "I pulled out my calculator to see just how long it would take the RIAA to sue all 60 million P2P music file traders at a rate of 75 a day. 60,000,000/75 = 800,000 days to subpoena each person or 800,000 days/365 days in a year = 2191.78 years to subpoena each person". Michaela points out that it's unrealistic to suppose that the RIAA will have any money left in 2191 years, and she even wonders whether the trade association will exist then. Plus, she points out, given the rate of tech advancement, it's likely that we'll have moved on to many different types of music media in even a hundred years. She continues: " So let us consider more realistic numbers. The RIAA plans to sue thousands of file sharers. Working in increments of 5000: 5,000 people/75 subpoenas a day = 66 days How are they going to keep track of all these lawsuits going on? 10,000 people/75 subpoenas a day = 133 days or about 2/3 of a year. "Keep in mind suing 10,000 people is still only going to impact only one six thousandth (1/6000) of the file traders out there. And who is getting rich off of this? The lawyers. Betcha not a single musician will see a cent of this money. "15,000 people/75 subpoenas a day = 200 days (1 out of every 4000 affected) 20,000 people/75 subpoenas a day = 266.6 days (1 out of every 3000 affected) "When might this actually start affecting us? When 1 out of every 10 is affected? That would mean they'd have to sue six million people. That would take,...(6,000,000/75 = 80,000)... 80,000 days.. or 219 years! They'd have to sue our great grand children!" µ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd.'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From kream77 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 30 21:23:02 2003 From: kream77 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Aniruddha=20Shankar?=) Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 16:53:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Compilation of interesting stuff - for the last 10 days or so Message-ID: <20030730155302.54595.qmail@web12303.mail.yahoo.com> This will probably be my last bulletin from gorgeous Bangalore - Many thanks to the Alternate Law Forum (www.altlawforum.org) for generous use of their computers and Internet connection. Many thanks for the messages of encouragement and support that I've gotten the past 10 days. Please forward these compilations to anyone or any list you feel appropriate. If the info contained in them is of use to you, I'd be quite happy if you mailed me and told me so. Aniruddha Karim Shankar ----Table of Contents----- Debian disses GNU Free Documentation License Tim O'Reilly. tech guru and publisher on IP & the future. Illegal Art - check this out. Revolution OS ( someone needs to buy this DVD) FLOSS in Asia ( by hamara Frederic Noronha ) Peer to Peer meets manufacturing (way-in-the-future) Gates: MS IP finds it's way into FLOSS GOP stalwart steps into Rosen's shoes Cyber Sleuths vs. Secret Networks IBM Points Out SCO's GPL Software Distribution "Copying is Theft - and other legal myths" Debian disses GNU Free Documentation License Debian has problems with the GNU Free Documentation License, decides to remove all GFDL work from it's main distribution. It claims it's not actually a free license at all. http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html http://www.advogato.org/article/682.html Tim O'Reilly. tech guru and publisher on IP & the future. O'Reilly is very optimistic that Big Content will eventually stop trying to litigate and legislate new technologies out of existence, and will ultimately embrace them and make loads of cash. http://stage4.co.uk/full_story.php?newsID=272 http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=174096756&m=5680914775&r=5680914775 Illegal Art - check this out. "The Illegal Art Exhibit will celebrate what is rapidly becoming the "degenerate art" of a corporate age: art and ideas on the legal fringes of intellectual property. Some of the pieces in the show have eluded lawyers; others have had to appear in court." http://www.illegal-art.org/ http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/001571.php Revolution OS ( someone needs to buy this DVD) "Revolution OS tells the inside story of the hackers and computer programmers who rebelled against Microsoft and the idea of propietary software to create GNU, Linux & The Open Source Movement. Shot on location in Silicon Valley on 35mm film and in widescreen, Revolution OS captures an offbeat group of characters who are three-parts libertarian, two-parts communist, and one part-bad garage band." http://www.thinkgeek.com/books/nonfiction/5dd5/ http://www.revolution-os.com/index.html FLOSS in Asia ( by hamara Frederic Noronha ) Survey of FLOSS usage in Asia, in two parts, focusses first on Japan & Korea, then goes on to talk about how FLOSS is good for development - it's nice to hear about Linux in a non-corporate, pseudo context. http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/07/11/2056234.shtml?tid=11 http://newsforge.com/newsforge/03/07/23/1745235.shtml?tid=51 Peer to Peer meets manufacturing (way-in-the-future) "Small times has an article detailing UCB advances in desktop manufacturing. They raise the possibility for effectively downloading physical objects through the net. We have allready seen the reaction "Property Holders" over downloading music, what is the likely upshot of being able to copy physical objects. More importantly what are the implications for our society as we move out of an age of scarcity to an age of plenty ?" http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=6413 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/28/117256 Gates: MS IP finds it's way into FLOSS "While speaking to financial analysts and commenting on the SCO lawsuit, Bill Gates made the claim that Microsoft's IP is also included in Free/Open source software. Without being specific, he said "There's no question that in cloning activities, IP from many, many companies, including Microsoft, is being used in open-source software. When people clone things, that often becomes unavoidable." Considering Microsoft's claims of ownership over technologies like CIFS, does this mean Microsoft may also launch SCO-style attacks against Free Software/Open Source?" http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=43532 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/27/1416212 GOP stalwart steps into Rosen's shoes "The RIAA has announced that it has named Mitch Bainwol, former chief of staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, as chairman & CEO. He replaces Hilary Rosen, who left earlier this month. This confirms the speculation that the RIAA would appoint a well-connected Republican (Rosen was a Democrat)." Several readers have submitted links to CNET's coverage as well. Update: 07/29 12:30 GMT by J: Lobbyists wield incredible power nowadays, and Slate's report on why was enlightening. Here's part 1 and part 2. Includes lyrics to the rap recorded for Rosen's going-away party by some of the most powerful people in the world: "Who wants the job of Hilary Rosen? / How 'bout the dream team of Bono and Tauzin?" http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=industryNews&storyID=3173482 http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5056299.html http://slate.msn.com/id/2085071/ http://slate.msn.com/id/2085165/ http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/29/043224 Cyber Sleuths vs. Secret Networks "I saw this article on BBC news and frankly, I was blown away. Just another example of the relentless campaign to treat file swappers as criminals when their 'crime' is murky at best." Sir Haxalot provides an article on the flip-side: "CNN has a story on 'exclusive' Peer to Peer networks, that require 'knowing the right people and having a wealth of content on your hard disk to get into the clique.'" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3104281.stm http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/29/private.fileshare/index.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/29/1918235&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=95 IBM Points Out SCO's GPL Software Distribution "Cnet is reporting that IBM has launched a counterstrike against SCO Group's attack on Linux users, arguing that SCO's demands for Unix license payments are undermined by its earlier shipment of an open-source Linux product." JayJay.br points out a similar but more colorful article on The Register "in which SCO says that 'SCO-Caldera does not own the copyrights to JFS (Journaling File System), RCU (Read, Copy, and Update), NUMA (Non-uniform Memory Access) software, and other IBM-developed AIX code that IBM contributed to the Linux kernel.' Gee, now that I was almost buying their license ..." http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/systems/0,39001153,39143645,00.htm http://mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-24-Copyrights_Story01.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/29/0049210 "Copying is Theft - and other legal myths" "As the war over P2P downloading heats up, and the record companies launch the novel marketing technique of suing their customers, I think it is an appropriate time to settle some of the pervasive myths about U.S. copyright law which fuel both sides of the debate, writes Mark Rasch, SecurityFocus columnist and former head of the Justice Department's computer crime unit. " http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32004.html -------- end bulletin ----- ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/