From bhagwati at sarai.net Sat Jul 3 12:56:57 2004 From: bhagwati at sarai.net (Bhagwati) Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004 12:56:57 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Raids and a Colony. Message-ID: <40E65FC1.2000401@sarai.net> dear friends, Here is a short writeup from my reserach notes. I think that there is an insufficient recognition of the forms in which diverse and new publics engages with the media. This dimension gets very clouded in discussions on piracy (when power of raids are uncritically paraded). This everyday world of negotiating media forms is always marked by desire and violence. (i work primarily in Hindi, and thus delays in sending materials to the list!) Cheers Bhagwati -------------------- The Madipur Village lies adjacent to the Madipur Colony. Of course, it doesn't look like a village at all. There are tall buildings, tarred, broad roads, and several factories. Perhaps it can be said that the existence of factories is the sole logic for the construction of buildings. The factories produce hosiery, shirts, trousers etc. Factory workers live in this village. Some have taken houses on rent, and others live in the factories. Sundays are off, and so the day for relaxing, roaming around. But Saturday nights have a different importance altogether. That's the time for watching films. The cassette shops here rent out some cassettes, but mostly CDs. Every shopkeeper/owner possesses five to six video CD players. And business is best on Saturday evenings. A set-up comprising a VCD player, a colour television and four movies is rent out at rates between Rs. 120 and 150. There was a police raid here a few days ago. All the shopkeepers were apprehended and asked to pay up Rs. 5000. At first, the shop keepers refused. But there was little they could do. The police simply stated that not only do you not have licenses to run video parlours, but moreover you rent out pirated VCDs. If you don't pay up, we'll confiscate all your material. What could the shop keepers do? They all handed over the five thousand rupees without another moment's hesitation. Among the shopkeeeprs is Mohd. Faizal. He said, "At least this will get the policemen to leave us in peace". According to him, the maximum earning is from the Blue Film VCDs, because those are usually carried home along with one or two other VCDs. And Blue Film CDs also get sold. That's why, he says, we don't want to close shop. "Four to five rentals every night mean an earning of Rs. 600. And all the material returns to the shop by morning. Why would we want to close a business such as this?" This much is clear that the police is aware of the weak links in this business, and uses them to its advantage to earn money. But the shop keepers also know that if they have to continue their business, they will have to bear with these small injuries. Bhagwati (translated from Hindi by Shveta) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From avinash at csdsdelhi.org Fri Jul 2 14:35:11 2004 From: avinash at csdsdelhi.org (Avinash Jha) Date: Fri, 02 Jul 2004 14:35:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Networks and the public domain Message-ID: <001101c46012$aea456a0$a500a8c0@library> I was wondering whether networks are, by definition, constituted as non-public domain. Since a network is a network of so many identifiable nodes, people, institutions etc. Public domain is, by definition, open and has no identifiable set of inhabitants. A public library is open for anyone to walk in. You cannot walk into a network, so to speak. - avinash __________________________________________________ Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040702/75330cec/attachment.html From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Sat Jul 3 11:52:15 2004 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (Sudhir) Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 11:52:15 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Mickey Mouse in trouble! Message-ID: <001c01c460c6$16c8b560$a100a8c0@Sudhir> Dear all The news item below focuses on the commercial returns that the copyright infringement suit can deliver in a context that reminds one of the Bappi Lahiri encounter! A more interesting sub-plot is the genealogy of the songs involved and ability of cultural forms to travel and assimilate with one another – a useful antidote to the copyright assumption that creative individualism produces culture de novo! Sudhir http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1253141,00.html Lion takes on Mouse in copyright row Poverty-stricken descendants of enduring hit song's composer could make fortune from Disney Rory Carroll in Johannesburg Saturday July 3, 2004 The Guardian The lion snoozed in the jungle, but it was in Johannesburg that his alleged owner woke up yesterday to claim some reward from one of pop's most successful songs. Lawyers for the family of Solomon Linda, a migrant Zulu worker whose 1939 composition formed the basis for Wimoweh and The Lion Sleeps Tonight, announced the first of what are promised to be many lawsuits against the entertainment industry. Under an arcane piece of colonial-era copyright law, the lawyers will next week sue Disney for £900,000 for using the song without permission in the film and stage show The Lion King. Mr Linda died penniless and was buried without a headstone in 1962 but his descendants, not much better off, hope to earn millions in damages and royalties for a tune so catchy that even those who loathe it hum along. "We intend going after anyone who is using the song. We started with Disney because they are the most active of the users," said Owen Dean, the South African lawyer leading the action, after a press conference in Johannesburg. "The Lion King musical ... is running to full houses all over the world while Linda's daughters work as domestic servants, live in shacks and struggle to feed their families. As far as we're concerned, this is both illegal and profoundly unfair." No one disputes that the Zulu who grew up protecting cattle from lions first came up with the 15-note melody in a Johannesburg recording studio to which he sold the copyright. He called the song Mbube, Zulu for lion, and it sold 100,000 records in southern Africa. It found its way to the American folk singer Pete Seeger, who in his autobiography recalled transcribing the song "note for note". His band, the Weavers, corrupted Mbube into Wimoweh, and got a number 6 hit in 1951-52. A decade later another band, The Tokens, rerecorded it with fresh, English lyrics and under the title The Lion Sleeps Tonight it topped the charts worldwide. Since then at least 170 artists have recorded versions of the tune, which according to Rolling Stone magazine has received the equivalent of three centuries of airplay on US radio stations. Its commercial triumph was sealed when it became the only non-Elton John song to be used in Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King and subsequent spin-offs and stage show. They have reportedly generated $1bn revenues. Though irregular royalty payments amounting to several thousand pounds did find their way to Linda's family, they remain poor. However, Dr Dean, an expert on copyright, found a provision in a 1911 British imperial copyright law which stated that all rights to a song reverted to the composer's estate 25 years after his death. It does not apply in the United States so the lawyers are suing Disney through a high court in Pretoria by "attaching" trademarks the company has registered in South Africa, including cartoon characters. If they win damages and Disney refuses to pay, Mr Linda's family has the right to sell those trademarks in South Africa, said Dr Dean. "We're detaining Mickey, Donald and all the others until proper justice is done by the Americans." --------------------------------- Sudhir Krishnaswamy College Teaching Fellow in Law Pembroke College Oxford OX1 1DW -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040703/81960594/attachment.html From sunil at mahiti.org Sun Jul 4 14:33:57 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2004 09:03:57 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Networks and the public domain In-Reply-To: <001101c46012$aea456a0$a500a8c0@library> References: <001101c46012$aea456a0$a500a8c0@library> Message-ID: <1088893883.632.155.camel@box> Dear Avinash, When you say network I hope you are not referring Internet. There is a famous cartoon which says "On the Internet, Nobody knows that you are a dog". See: http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.jpg Also see the reality check: http://www.unc.edu/courses/jomc050/sum97/dog2.gif But unfortunately the question of anonymity on the Internet is not so simple. There seems to be two main directions in which the technology seems to be moving: 1. More Privacy: Services like proxy servers and anonymizers which surfers can hide behind. Tools that allow you to spoof your IP address and fake information sent by your browsers to the Internet [for ex. Opera browser]. 2. Less Privacy: Software that dial home like Windows XP and different type media players. Spyware that monitor all your activities on the computer usually for marketeers. There are two other scenarios 1. My computer being used by someone else. The websites s/he visits will think it is me. 2. A virus which infects my computer [usually only on Windows] accesses on-line resources / services without asking me. Therefore I don't think the Internet is network of many "identifiable" nodes, people, institutions. In that sense, it is public domain. Thanks, Sunil On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 09:05, Avinash Jha wrote: > I was wondering whether networks are, by definition, constituted > as non-public domain. Since a network is a network of so many > identifiable nodes, people, institutions etc. Public domain is, by > definition, open and has no identifiable set of inhabitants. A public > library is open for anyone to walk in. You cannot walk into a network, > so to speak. - avinash Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP As FOSS Consultant - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From annymcbeal at rediffmail.com Sun Jul 4 12:14:12 2004 From: annymcbeal at rediffmail.com (anuranjan s) Date: 4 Jul 2004 06:44:12 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] (no subject) Message-ID: <20040704064412.4291.qmail@webmail25.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040704/51c9089a/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- Hi All, below is my final structure and chapterisation of the paper for July student's workshop in Bangalore. It contains, in brief the arguments that the paper will make and the conclusion. Please do express your thoughts on it, as it would help me make the research and conclusions more useful and coherent. Best Anuranjan Patent and Innovation The central focus of the paper is to establish the lost link between the primary purposes of the patent, i.e. to stimulate innovation in its contemporary practice. Chapter 1: This chapter deals with the recent controversies emerging out of the extensions of the patent to the new fields of technology. These include academicians’ objections to extending the scope of patent to mere discoveries of pre-existing substances, which violates the basic parameter of grant of a patent, i.e. novelty, inventiveness and utility. The question often posed- whether these modern extensions actually promote innovation or hampers it by over-propertising and over-protecting the basic tools required for scientific development. This question is especially important in the fields of software and biotechnology. Another major kind of attack emerges from the scientific community, including independent researchers and medical practitioners who claim that these wide grant of patents acts as an impediment to the development of basic research and to their vocational practice. Yet another emerging voice against the modern practice of granting of patent comes from the employees of corporations and commercial laboratories indulging into R&D, claiming that the incidence of patent is misdirected. Due to pre-invention contracts between the employer and employee, which virtually strip the employees of all their rights in the invention as well as the inventive process, hence defeating the true purpose of patent, i.e. to stimulate innovative activity for the progress of science. On the other hand the ever-rising need for investment into various risky and costly R&D technologies like software and biotechnology are demanding stronger protection of their inventions through patents. Since the cost involved in modern R&D technologies is so high that without a strong and well-established patent system, it would be suicidal for these firms to invest into R&D. The chapter concludes that modern trends of patenting seem to be trying to balance the interests of more than one contender and in the process incurring high social costs. Either the modern trends in patenting (driven by the demands of new technologies) has brought patent law to such anomalous situation or there are some underlying conflicts within the patent doctrine which now recurs in the modern practice of patenting. The following chapters will attempt to answer the question raised in this chapter. Chapter 2: This chapter dwells into the historical origins of the patent law to search for the true purpose and justifications of patent law to be able to answer the question posed in the conclusion of the previous chapter. A look at various studies on the historical origins and evolution of the patents suggests that the purpose and justifications for having a patent system was never static or even certain. Early grants of patents were made by the English monarchs, essentially in the nature of a privilege for the purpose to bring into England any new art or science which would promote the development of the country. Patents were selectively granted, keeping in mind the developmental needs of the country and the trade interests of citizens of England. The patent grant was given to induce the importer to bring into the country new technique and technology, which may or may not be existing in the realm. Patents grant till this stage can be justified as the monetary allurement for foreign importers to bring into England new technologies essentially to strengthen the economy of the country. This trend ended with the passing of Statute of Monopolies in the 17th Century essentially to curb monarch’s power to grant patent, which would now be granted by the parliament for essentially the same purpose, but to a first and true inventor of a new technology. The requirement of “newness” was totally different from that under the monarch’s patents, wherein even an already existing, but not practiced in England could also claim a patent. Also the major shift from a privilege to a right marks the beginning of a new shift in the justification for patent from being a contract between the patentee and the monarch, to it being a social contract. A valid specification as a pre-requisite for patent is a marker of this shift wherein monopoly profits were given by society in consideration for a full disclosure of the method of working the invention. The developments in the patent doctrine during this period hints the emergence an alternative justification for patents, this time from the point of view of the inventor (who was earlier merely an importer). This development in patent doctrine is contemporaneous to the era when the romantic author in copyright emerged and to the dominance of natural law philosophy in the legal theory. Patents became a tool for stimulating both foreign and national inventors to expend their intellectual capital to create a new and useful invention. The oft-unnoticed factor in the development of patent doctrine by this time was the plurality of purpose & justifications upon which the patent doctrine rests and also the inter-relationship of these different purposes upon the rationality of patent doctrine. History also demonstrates that patent never rested on a very firm ground and its very foundations were often re-defined by the dominating interests in the society using the existing philosophies of the time. The important conclusion that this chapter reaches at is that the duality of interests especially into monetary and personal, diversified the basis of the patent doctrine which was neither contemplated nor adequately understood by either supporters or opponents of the patent doctrine till date. Chapter 3: The need for huge amounts of public or private funding into R&D has been reasserted by the modern technologies, which coupled with reducing public investment into science and technology yet again turn to patent law for ensuring that sufficient investment goes into these technologies. These modern technologies are offering promising avenues for bettering human life and are redefining the very manner in which the human society operates. But along with these modern technologies also came a shift in the inventorship paradigm in which the patent law operates. This change has occurred due to a variety of social factors including division of labour, need for huge investments into fields of technology coupled with the ease with which patent doctrine is often used to cover the interests of ever-increasing stake holders. Private owned commercial laboratories and corporate firms indulging into R&D form these “new inventive spaces” where the modern technologies thrive. These spaces also breed the conflict between the two major stake holders in the patent system- ‘the inventor’ and ‘the investor’. These new inventive spaces have brought out these two different stakes that the patent law often treats as one. In the history of patent law and also in the contemporary practice and theory of patent, never ever the interests of these two entities have been treated separately, lesser ever their relation to each other and to the patent law has been explored. USPTO’s list of top 10 patent holders for last several years have been various Multi National Corporations lead by computer hardware giant IBM. Since the patent law doesn’t recognize an unnatural person to be an inventor such patents are actually obtained in the name of the actual employee-inventor. These patents are compulsorily assignable to the employer-corporation and this assignment has its legal basis in the principle of ‘freedom of contract’. There is enough and more evidence to suggest that most of these MNCs enter into pre-invention agreements with their employees indulging into R&D activities. The justification offered by economists for having such an arrangement that such a pre-invention agreement prevents the employer from entering into inefficient bargaining and reduces the risk involved in investing into R&D activities which often don’t yield any fruitful results. Patents ensure that the corporations recoup their investment costs and more by allowing them to charge a monopoly price upon their invention. On the other hand, various theorists have been constantly arguing for exclusive rights for the employees in their inventions on the ground of personhood theory of property, arguing that the basic purpose for patent still remains to stimulate inventive activity in the individual and not just monetary investment by any artificial entity. Several studies have taken sides in the above conflict arguing that patent rationale would fall if either of investor’s or inventor’s (as the case may be) interests are subordinated to the other. Theorists have often failed to see this situation of stalemate, where these two primary purposes of the patent law come into direct conflict with each other. Several middle paths offered by the economists as the way out of this impasse tend greatly to trim down the impact absolute patent protection would have had upon the interests involved. In case of ‘an inventor’ who may not have substantial monetary stakes in the success of the invention, the real (psychological) effect of a diluted and in most cases absent patent protection might be very difficult to guess. This paper concludes that the conflict between primacy of inventor’s and investor’s interests is inherent in the patent law. Though the conflict is most evident in the modern inventive spaces where these two players have emerged most starkly distinguished in their identities and interests, the roots of the conflict lies in the loose justifications that patent doctrine has sailed in all through the history. This paper does not attempt to answer the question ‘whether this conflict can be resolved in our current theoretical framework of scholarship around patents’, that would amount to a separate enquiry requiring further research to be done. It rather asks the question- whether this underlying divide in the patent law could be responsible for the unguided broadening of the scope of patents and the contemporary practice of patenting; what alternative solutions, outside the existing paradigm of the Intellectual Property Rights can be considered, while one attempts to balance these conflicting social interests without defeating the ultimate objective of a patent system? From annymcbeal at rediffmail.com Sun Jul 4 12:14:12 2004 From: annymcbeal at rediffmail.com (anuranjan s) Date: 4 Jul 2004 06:44:12 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] (no subject) Message-ID: <20040704064412.4291.qmail@webmail25.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040704/51c9089a/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- Hi All, below is my final structure and chapterisation of the paper for July student's workshop in Bangalore. It contains, in brief the arguments that the paper will make and the conclusion. Please do express your thoughts on it, as it would help me make the research and conclusions more useful and coherent. Best Anuranjan Patent and Innovation The central focus of the paper is to establish the lost link between the primary purposes of the patent, i.e. to stimulate innovation in its contemporary practice. Chapter 1: This chapter deals with the recent controversies emerging out of the extensions of the patent to the new fields of technology. These include academicians’ objections to extending the scope of patent to mere discoveries of pre-existing substances, which violates the basic parameter of grant of a patent, i.e. novelty, inventiveness and utility. The question often posed- whether these modern extensions actually promote innovation or hampers it by over-propertising and over-protecting the basic tools required for scientific development. This question is especially important in the fields of software and biotechnology. Another major kind of attack emerges from the scientific community, including independent researchers and medical practitioners who claim that these wide grant of patents acts as an impediment to the development of basic research and to their vocational practice. Yet another emerging voice against the modern practice of granting of patent comes from the employees of corporations and commercial laboratories indulging into R&D, claiming that the incidence of patent is misdirected. Due to pre-invention contracts between the employer and employee, which virtually strip the employees of all their rights in the invention as well as the inventive process, hence defeating the true purpose of patent, i.e. to stimulate innovative activity for the progress of science. On the other hand the ever-rising need for investment into various risky and costly R&D technologies like software and biotechnology are demanding stronger protection of their inventions through patents. Since the cost involved in modern R&D technologies is so high that without a strong and well-established patent system, it would be suicidal for these firms to invest into R&D. The chapter concludes that modern trends of patenting seem to be trying to balance the interests of more than one contender and in the process incurring high social costs. Either the modern trends in patenting (driven by the demands of new technologies) has brought patent law to such anomalous situation or there are some underlying conflicts within the patent doctrine which now recurs in the modern practice of patenting. The following chapters will attempt to answer the question raised in this chapter. Chapter 2: This chapter dwells into the historical origins of the patent law to search for the true purpose and justifications of patent law to be able to answer the question posed in the conclusion of the previous chapter. A look at various studies on the historical origins and evolution of the patents suggests that the purpose and justifications for having a patent system was never static or even certain. Early grants of patents were made by the English monarchs, essentially in the nature of a privilege for the purpose to bring into England any new art or science which would promote the development of the country. Patents were selectively granted, keeping in mind the developmental needs of the country and the trade interests of citizens of England. The patent grant was given to induce the importer to bring into the country new technique and technology, which may or may not be existing in the realm. Patents grant till this stage can be justified as the monetary allurement for foreign importers to bring into England new technologies essentially to strengthen the economy of the country. This trend ended with the passing of Statute of Monopolies in the 17th Century essentially to curb monarch’s power to grant patent, which would now be granted by the parliament for essentially the same purpose, but to a first and true inventor of a new technology. The requirement of “newness” was totally different from that under the monarch’s patents, wherein even an already existing, but not practiced in England could also claim a patent. Also the major shift from a privilege to a right marks the beginning of a new shift in the justification for patent from being a contract between the patentee and the monarch, to it being a social contract. A valid specification as a pre-requisite for patent is a marker of this shift wherein monopoly profits were given by society in consideration for a full disclosure of the method of working the invention. The developments in the patent doctrine during this period hints the emergence an alternative justification for patents, this time from the point of view of the inventor (who was earlier merely an importer). This development in patent doctrine is contemporaneous to the era when the romantic author in copyright emerged and to the dominance of natural law philosophy in the legal theory. Patents became a tool for stimulating both foreign and national inventors to expend their intellectual capital to create a new and useful invention. The oft-unnoticed factor in the development of patent doctrine by this time was the plurality of purpose & justifications upon which the patent doctrine rests and also the inter-relationship of these different purposes upon the rationality of patent doctrine. History also demonstrates that patent never rested on a very firm ground and its very foundations were often re-defined by the dominating interests in the society using the existing philosophies of the time. The important conclusion that this chapter reaches at is that the duality of interests especially into monetary and personal, diversified the basis of the patent doctrine which was neither contemplated nor adequately understood by either supporters or opponents of the patent doctrine till date. Chapter 3: The need for huge amounts of public or private funding into R&D has been reasserted by the modern technologies, which coupled with reducing public investment into science and technology yet again turn to patent law for ensuring that sufficient investment goes into these technologies. These modern technologies are offering promising avenues for bettering human life and are redefining the very manner in which the human society operates. But along with these modern technologies also came a shift in the inventorship paradigm in which the patent law operates. This change has occurred due to a variety of social factors including division of labour, need for huge investments into fields of technology coupled with the ease with which patent doctrine is often used to cover the interests of ever-increasing stake holders. Private owned commercial laboratories and corporate firms indulging into R&D form these “new inventive spaces” where the modern technologies thrive. These spaces also breed the conflict between the two major stake holders in the patent system- ‘the inventor’ and ‘the investor’. These new inventive spaces have brought out these two different stakes that the patent law often treats as one. In the history of patent law and also in the contemporary practice and theory of patent, never ever the interests of these two entities have been treated separately, lesser ever their relation to each other and to the patent law has been explored. USPTO’s list of top 10 patent holders for last several years have been various Multi National Corporations lead by computer hardware giant IBM. Since the patent law doesn’t recognize an unnatural person to be an inventor such patents are actually obtained in the name of the actual employee-inventor. These patents are compulsorily assignable to the employer-corporation and this assignment has its legal basis in the principle of ‘freedom of contract’. There is enough and more evidence to suggest that most of these MNCs enter into pre-invention agreements with their employees indulging into R&D activities. The justification offered by economists for having such an arrangement that such a pre-invention agreement prevents the employer from entering into inefficient bargaining and reduces the risk involved in investing into R&D activities which often don’t yield any fruitful results. Patents ensure that the corporations recoup their investment costs and more by allowing them to charge a monopoly price upon their invention. On the other hand, various theorists have been constantly arguing for exclusive rights for the employees in their inventions on the ground of personhood theory of property, arguing that the basic purpose for patent still remains to stimulate inventive activity in the individual and not just monetary investment by any artificial entity. Several studies have taken sides in the above conflict arguing that patent rationale would fall if either of investor’s or inventor’s (as the case may be) interests are subordinated to the other. Theorists have often failed to see this situation of stalemate, where these two primary purposes of the patent law come into direct conflict with each other. Several middle paths offered by the economists as the way out of this impasse tend greatly to trim down the impact absolute patent protection would have had upon the interests involved. In case of ‘an inventor’ who may not have substantial monetary stakes in the success of the invention, the real (psychological) effect of a diluted and in most cases absent patent protection might be very difficult to guess. This paper concludes that the conflict between primacy of inventor’s and investor’s interests is inherent in the patent law. Though the conflict is most evident in the modern inventive spaces where these two players have emerged most starkly distinguished in their identities and interests, the roots of the conflict lies in the loose justifications that patent doctrine has sailed in all through the history. This paper does not attempt to answer the question ‘whether this conflict can be resolved in our current theoretical framework of scholarship around patents’, that would amount to a separate enquiry requiring further research to be done. It rather asks the question- whether this underlying divide in the patent law could be responsible for the unguided broadening of the scope of patents and the contemporary practice of patenting; what alternative solutions, outside the existing paradigm of the Intellectual Property Rights can be considered, while one attempts to balance these conflicting social interests without defeating the ultimate objective of a patent system? From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 5 09:16:59 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 20:46:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! Message-ID: <20040705034659.77731.qmail@web52710.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Shekhar Krishnan Subject: [Reader-list] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! Date: Sun, 4 Jul 2004 21:04:36 +0530 Size: 8048 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040704/4d84d040/attachment.mht From sunil at mahiti.org Mon Jul 5 19:37:03 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 14:07:03 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Kannada Fonts..A Copyright Issue..Relevant for E-Governance Message-ID: <1089036423.1127.187.camel@box> Dear Lawrence, I forgot what you said exactly at the Indic Computing workshop. Please correct my revert to Na.Vijayashankar . See his mail below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indian Copyright Law with regard to Fonts 1. The design of a font per se cannot be copyrighted. As the law believes these exist in the public domain. 2. If the digital representation is only the shape of the characters and there is no value addition then this also cannot be copyrighted. In computer terminology these are called Glyphs. 3. However if they is addition value add - GSUB tables that determine how how two glyphs combine to form the third one; GPOS tables how glyphs are positioned next to each other for ex. consonant and a vowel sign; Hinting and Anti-aliasing to ensure that the font looks nice at different sizes and devices. Then the sum of all this additional human effort can be copyrighted as a font. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Missing your harami company here in KL ;-) Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP As FOSS Consultant - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net -----Forwarded Message----- From: Na.Vijayashankar Subject: [eGovKarnataka] Kannada Fonts..A Copyright Issue..Relevant for E-Governance Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 05:02:59 +0000 Can "Fonts" be Copyrighted? Of late there has been a discussion on the web on copyright of the fonts of "Kannada" which is a language used by over 50 million persons in India and officially recognized by the constitution of India. While thinking on this issue, it is necessary for the community to consider if at all it is correct for copyright to be recognized for "Fonts". "Font" is a written expression of a language or the alphabets of a language. ...Any copyright claim on the "Font" indirectly claims the "Copyright" on the language itself. I wish that Netizen right activists take up this issue in the appropriate forum and fight for the "Free Licensing" of Fonts...Alternatively, the Government .. should legislate that "Fonts" should be subject matter of "Compulsory Free Licensing". In respect of the Kannada Font, I request the Karnataka Government to take necessary steps to declare that all "Kannada fonts per-se used in the computers and web space should be considered as community right and not subject to commercial considerations of any kind". (Detailed article is available here: http://www.naavi.org/cl_editorial_04/edit_03_july_05_01.htm I invite the views of the members to reproduce them at www.naavi.org Naavi From jace at pobox.com Mon Jul 5 12:49:11 2004 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 12:49:11 +0530 Subject: Are maps copyrightable? (was Re: [Commons-Law] Kannada Fonts..) In-Reply-To: <1089036423.1127.187.camel@box> References: <1089036423.1127.187.camel@box> Message-ID: <9CC2DCBE-CE53-11D8-8A2A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> On Jul 5, 2004, at 7:37 PM, Sunil Abraham wrote: > Indian Copyright Law with regard to Fonts > 1. The design of a font per se cannot be copyrighted. As the law > believes these exist in the public domain. Speaking of which, does anyone know if street maps are copyrightable in India? AFAIK, US copyright law makes it very hard to copyright a map since the represented data is public domain, whereas in India, making a map itself is illegal (circumvented by claiming the map is not to scale), and hence the basis that the data is public domain does not arise. There are currently no decent-quality street maps of any Indian city available online or on CD at a reasonable cost. (The mapsofindia.com maps don't qualify as decent quality.) Spatial Data (also known as SP Info Soft) sells a map of Bangalore on CD, but it's only accessible using their proprietary non-extensible browser. Eicher Goodearth makes excellent maps of some cities, but these maps are only available in print. I intend to setup an online map resource that users can annotate -- mark one-ways, diversions, landmarks, resources, bus routes, cell towers, etc. -- and access from a mobile phone with GPRS or other means of Internet access. This is sort of like applying the Wiki concept to street maps. Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle is in obtaining basic map data to start with. I've considered making vector tracings of printed street maps, thereby making the vector version a wholly new creation based on arguably public domain data, but from what I can make out, Indian copyright law isn't clear on whether this is a violation. -- Kiran Jonnalagadda http://www.pobox.com/~jace From pramodleo at yahoo.co.uk Mon Jul 5 12:33:12 2004 From: pramodleo at yahoo.co.uk (Pramod.R) Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 12:33:12 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Moore: Pirate my film, no problem! In-Reply-To: <20040705034659.77731.qmail@web52710.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040705034659.77731.qmail@web52710.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <40E8FD30.7020903@yahoo.co.uk> Slashdot discussion on the same with links to the torrents. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/04/140240&mode=nested&tid=188&tid=97 > http://www.sundayherald.com/43167 > > Moore: pirate my film, no problem > > Fury as Fahrenheit 9/11 director backs illegal not-for-profit downloads > By Iain S Bruce, Online Editor > > Controversial film-maker Michael Moore has welcomed the appearance on > the internet of pirated copies of his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit > 9/11 and claimed he is happy for anybody to download it free of charge. From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 5 15:32:33 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 03:02:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: [Reader-list] copyright for fonts? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20040705100233.61267.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> Hi all sending some notes which outlines the existing law on IP and fonts that i had made, the matter has now fallen more under the relam of patent law than copyright. I wold be happy to explain any of the technical points if anyone finds it too cryptic Lawrence Fonts as intellectual Property Fonts- For purpose of law can be divided into Typefaces; Fonts; and Font Formats 1. TYPE FACES and COPYRIGHT � Although technically an artistic work, type faces have been denied copyright protection for number of reasons � Eltra v. Ringer � 1972- appellant sought to register his fonts as works of art under ther copyright act-: The office refused registration stating that there �no elements, either alone or in combination which can separately be identified as a work of art� � He appealed the decision A typeface haad been defined by the Copyright act as �a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic characters, whose forms are related by repeating design elements consistently applied in a notational system and are intended to be embodied � The court went into the utility question and argued that in the case of type faces the design and the utility were so integrated that once could not argue for it being an artistic work outside of its utility. under s 5(g) to conform, (s 202.10(c), 37 C.F.R.): "(c) If the sole intrinsic function of an article is its utility, the fact that the article is unique and attractively shaped will not qualify it as a work of art. However, if the shape of a utilitarian article incorporates features, such as artistic sculpture, carving, or pictorial representation, which can be identified separately and are capable of existing independently as a work of art, such features will be eligible for registration." 2. TYPEFACES AND PATENT Adobe v. southern software-1998 � Adobe sued SS for copyright infringement; they claimed that the defendant had used a font editor to modify Adobe�s fonts Adobe contends that King loaded Adobe font software programs into his computer then created his own 1555 font software program by using FontMonger. FontMonger extracted reference points, or on-curve points, and stored this information. FontMonger stores both existing on-curve points and off-curve points. FontMonger does not copy any of the glyph instructions; it inserts new glyph instructions. However, the glyph instructions are implicit in the sequence and nature of the glyph coordinates. Thus, unless the on-curve points and off-curve points are moved by the user, the glyph instructions written by FontMonger will be functionally identical to those of the original font software program. Adobe contends that after extracting all of the glyph coordinates from the Adobe programs, King merely scaled the coordinates 101% on the vertical axis in order to change the font slightly. Adobe contends that the only difference between the 1555 product and the 2002 product is that the value of each x coordinate has been increased by a uniform amount and the advance widths have been changed Argument 1 � Defendant contended that a copyright infringement existed only when there was a valid copyright that subsisted in a work, and since there is no type faces are not copyrightable subject matter there cannot be any infringement � Adobe argued that a computer program produces unprotectable typefaces does not make the computer program itself unprotectable 1988 Copyright Office Policy Decision, the Copyright Office determined that digitized typefaces were not copyrightable because they were not computer programs and required little selection or arrangement beyond that dictated by the uncopyrightable typeface design. ��Policy Decision on the Copyrightability of Digitized Typefaces, �� 53 Fed. Reg. 38 1 lo-381 13 (September 29, 1988). However, in 1992 the Copyright Office issued a final regulation regarding the registrability of ��computer programs that generate typefaces�� which appears to back off the 1988 policy decision: The 1992 Regulation states: bitmapped fonts are merely the computerised representation of a typeface and not copyrightable. Scalable fonts are different; After a careful review of the testimony and the written comments, the Copyright Office is persuaded that creating scalable typefonts using already digitized typeface represents a significant change in the industry since our previous Policy Decision. We are also persuaded that computer programs designed for generating typeface in conjunction with low resolution and other printing devices may involve original computer instructions entitled to protection under the Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable font output programs to produce harmonious fonts consisting of hundreds of characters typically involves many decisions in drafting the instructions that drive the printer. The expression of these decisions is neither limited by the unprotectible shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of authorship, is thus registrable as a computer program. � Coincidence of course that the 1992 regulations came into place after intense lobbying by Adobe systems with congress Argument 2: Lack of originality or creativity � Defendants argue that after one has filtered out the unprotectabie elements of plaintiffs software in order to compare what remains, one finds that minimal, if any, protectable expression remains. � Defendants argued that ��merely manipulating an unprotectable font image to create another, slightly different (but still unprotectable) font image cannot possibly give rise to protectable expression....�� Defendants argued that no matter what points are selected by the Adobe editor performing the process, they correspond directly to, and hence are determined by, the unprotectable font shape. Therefore, because the output is not protected and there cannot be any creativity in what the editor does to obtain the output, nothing is protectable � Adobe argued that originality for the purpose of copyright does not pertain to creative originality but to the point of origin and the threshold required for proving a work to be original is very low � Adobe argued that �while the shape of the glyph necessarily dictates some of the points to be chosen to create the glyph, it does not determine all the points to be chosen. Thus, each rendering of a specific glyph requires choices by the editor as to what points to select and where to place those points. Accordingly, Adobe asserts that the selection of points and the placement of those points are expression which is copyrightable in an original font output program. The actual code is dictated by the selected points�. � Court agreed thnd stated that �The evidence presented shows that there is some creativity in designing the font software programs. While the glyph dictates to a certain extent what points the editor must choose, it does not dictate every point that must be chosen. Adobe has shown that font editors make creative choices as to what points to select based on the image in front of them on the computer screen. The code is determined directly from the selection of the points. Thus, any copying of the points is copying of literal expression, that is, in essence, copying of the computer code itself Argument 3: Patent claims Adobe is the owner of six design patents. Adobe�s design patents are presumed valid; however, that presumption may be overcome by clear and convincing evidence to the contrary. Adobe asserts that defendants have infringed the design patents. 1. Defendants assert that the patents are invalid and unenforceable as a matter of law, Defendants claim that the patents are invalid because the font designs are non-statutory subject matter in violation of 35 U.S.C. section 171 (requiring ��original and ornamental design for an article of manufacture��) in that none of the design patents discloses an article of manufacture. 2. Defendants further assert that the patents are invalid because the designs each lack the requisite novelty and nonobviousness for patentability. Defendants also claim that, in any event, the design patents are unenforceable because Adobe willfully failed to disclose prior art when applying for the patents. Adobe contends, however, that the requisite article of manufacture in this case is the program which allows the typeface to be rendered. The court in ex parte Tavama, 24 U.S.P.Q.2d 1614, 1616 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1992), after rejecting a claim for the ornamental design of an icon, observed Moreover, appellant asserted that affirmance of the rejection will bring into question the validity of numerous design patents directed to type fonts. We disagree. The phrase ��type font�� may be properly interpreted as referring to letter blocks or pieces used in a conventional printing press. The blocks or pieces constitute an article or articles of manufacture. Unlike the designs here, which are stated to be surface ornamentation, type font designs are reasonably interpreted to be the shape or configuration of the letter blocks. The fact that the meaning of ��type font�� may have expanded in usage to include letters or numbers appearing on paper or on a computer screen does not invalidate the long-standing interpretation of type font designs as configuration-type designs or pieces or blocks of type. 24 U.S.P.Q. 2d at 1618. Based upon the reasoning of Tayama, type fonts are patentable subject matter and the program which creates the type fonts is the article of manufacture.12 Accordingly, the court finds that the typeface designs are statutory subject matter entitled to patent protection. � On the issue of whether or not there was disclosure and prior art, the court found that there issues of facts which were triable and had to be reconsidered. � The decision of the court is now on appeal. Impact of Adobe v. southern software � While traditionally type faces were held to be uncopyrightable , the impact of the adobe case by granting patent protection to the type face it is in effect a protection of the type face and more Jonathan Mezrich: � In light of Adobe, the extension of copyright law to fonts will have a profound impact on the software industry. Adobe has a history of aggressively setting software standards: initially in the realm of desktop publishing and recently in the area of web publishing and web page design. Moreover, Adobe has entered licensing agreements with IBM, Apple, and Microsoft that likely will lead to implementation of Adobe technology and standards in these companies� future products. Because these new products will utilize Adobe-generated fonts and will require related programs and peripherals to mimic the same standards, Adobe will reap enormous benefits either for as long as the standard persists or until their copyrights expire. In light of the Adobe holding, Adobe apparently will be able to charge a licensing fee for its web design and publishing software as well as for the underlying fonts. Companies wishing to create software for platforms utilizing the Adobe standard will have to pay a licensing fee to Adobe or forego satisfying customers utilizing these major platforms such as IBM, Apple, and Microsoft). 3. FONT FORMAT AND PATENT/ COPYRIGHT - What is the impact of the Adobe case for font formats? - Can font formats either be copyrighted, patented or protected under any form of IP? 3.1 Copyright and the idea/ expression dichotomy � Baker v. selden � and the double entry ledger system- utility argument 3.2 Software Patents � Initial position of the patent office was to outright reject applications for software patents � Early instance of whether an invention consisting of mathematical algorithm is patentable subject matter arose in Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) � �We conclude that one may not patent an idea. The mathematical formula involved here has no substantial practical application except in connection with a digital computer which means that if the judgement below is affirmed, the patent would wholly pre empt the mathematical formula and in effect would be a patent o the algorithm itself� � �it is conceded that one may not patent an idea. But that would be the result if the formula were to be allowed to be patented in this case�. � This did not stop people from attempting to patent software and the 70�s saw a number of applications for special purpose computers. In Flook (1978), the court held that a patent on a method of calculating am alarm limit controlling the temperature was unpatentable because the only novel part of the invention was a mathematical formula. � In Diamond v. Diehr (1981), the court however held that the patent was framed not as a method of calculating a number but of curing rubber. The fact that the method used a formula to compute temperature and that the use of that formula in a computer was the only novel part of the invention did not render the process as a while unpatentable. � The US court of appeals created a two part test known as the Freeman-Walter-Abele test: o First determine whether a patent claim recites an algorithm directly or indirectly o If it does, then is the claimed invention as a whole no more than ther algorithm itself? � After the establishment of this test, patent claims started describing themselves as part of a process rather than as a algorithm itself. � In Re Allapat- The invention will read on a general purpose computer programmed to carry out the claimed invention, but the claim is patentable nonetheless because �such programming creates a new machine, because a general purpose computer in effect becomes a special purpose computer once it is programmed to perform specific functions pursuant to instruction form programmed software� � Is this not true of any program? � There was still confusion however after the Allapat decision , for instance in In re Lowry, abstract claims to a type of software adapt structure where objects a arranged complex manner was held to be patentable , while in In Re Warmerdam, a process claim was rejected since trhe mathematical algorithm is implicit in the claim that is made. � The US PTO then issued the 1996 guidelines Although most software related inventions are now statutory under these guidelines, it is important to remember that "software" as a class is not patentable. What is patentable are "processes" and "machines". Thus the guidelines are framed so as to assist in determining when computer related inventions are patentable processes or machines. According to the new guidelines, computer programs that have traditionally been held to be statutory will continue to be statutory without further analysis. These "safe harbor" inventions include two types of inventions: Those having "significant post solution activity", meaning that the software program is used to control something external to the software routine (such as curing rubber), and those having "pre-computer process activity", meaning software programs that manipulate numbers representing concrete, real world values (such as electrocardiograph signals and seismic measurements. In addition to these safe harbor inventions, a computer related invention will be statutory if it is claimed in connection with a specific machine or product. This can be accomplished by defining specific code segments or routines in the patent application, or by claiming the invention in connection with a specific type of computer or memory structure. What is not important is the type of computer program involved. Thus, while it is clear that a program designed to improve communication speed over a modem is statutory subject matter, it is equally clear that a graphics program, a spreadsheet, and a word processing program are statutory when properly claimed. The disjuncture between the reality and the law: With over 40,000 software patents in force and several thousands being issued every year, the law seems to be left far behind. The �cognitive dissonance� that results between what the law is and the actual practice has been suggests that the law can be expected to change or that a large number of issued patents will have to be held to be invalid. � State Street v. Signature- business process patent- a mathematical algorithm may be an integral part of a patentable subject matter such as a machine oro a process if the claimed invention as a whiolke is applied in any useful manner Even after establishing that it is patentable subject matter you will still have to pass the test of whether or not it satisfies the other requirements of as valid patent namely: 1. Novelty 2. Non Obviousness 3. Prior Art Fair Use defence Sec. 52[(aa) [(ab) the doing of any act necessary to obtain information essential for operating inter-operability of an independently created computer programme with other programmes by a lawful possessor of a computer programme, provided that such information is not otherwise readily available; (ac) the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer programme in order to determine the ideas and principles which underline any elements of the programme while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer programme was supplied; Conclusion 1. idea/ expression dichotomy v. reality of software patents 2. The movement towards meta copyright _ DMCA and anti circumvention technology 3. The movement away from copyright to contractual modes of protection __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com Mon Jul 5 16:00:32 2004 From: rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com (Rajlakshmi Nesargi) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 03:30:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Mickey Mouse in trouble! Message-ID: <20040705103032.19685.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> Dear all, This article provides an insight on the Sony Bono Extension granted to the Walt Disney characters by the then governement led by president Clinton. Further I wonder what course the family of Solomon Linda would have taken had the Walt Disney characters fallen into public domain. Best Rajlakshmi http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html "You must be the change you wish to see in the world. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win"-Mahatma Gandhi --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040705/0b06d68c/attachment.html From paivakil at yahoo.co.in Mon Jul 5 16:48:00 2004 From: paivakil at yahoo.co.in (Mahesh T. Pai) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 16:48:00 +0530 Subject: Are maps copyrightable? (was Re: [Commons-Law] Kannada Fonts..) In-Reply-To: <9CC2DCBE-CE53-11D8-8A2A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> References: <1089036423.1127.187.camel@box> <9CC2DCBE-CE53-11D8-8A2A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> Message-ID: <20040705111759.GB1812@nandini.home> Kiran Jonnalagadda said on Mon, Jul 05, 2004 at 12:49:11PM +0530,: > I intend to setup an online map resource that users can annotate -- > mark one-ways, diversions, landmarks, resources, bus routes, cell > towers, etc. -- and access from a mobile phone with GPRS or other means > of Internet access. This is sort of like applying the Wiki concept to > street maps. Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle is in obtaining basic > map data to start with. Wow!!! Wow!!! (me speechless) -- Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com Free Software - it is free as in FREEDOM From paivakil at yahoo.co.in Mon Jul 5 17:22:45 2004 From: paivakil at yahoo.co.in (Mahesh T. Pai) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 17:22:45 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Mickey Mouse in trouble! In-Reply-To: <20040705103032.19685.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040705103032.19685.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040705115245.GA3064@nandini.home> Rajlakshmi Nesargi said on Mon, Jul 05, 2004 at 03:30:32AM -0700,: > This article provides an insight on the Sony Bono Extension granted > to the Walt Disney characters by the then governement led by > president Clinton. Further I wonder what course the family of > Solomon Linda would have taken had the Walt Disney characters > fallen into public domain. We need to wait and watch whether this turns out to be `Bhasmasura's boon' or mere `cost of doing business'. -- Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com സ‌്വാതന്ത്റ്യം എന്‌റെ ജന്മാവകാശമാണ്. Freedom is my birth right. From rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com Tue Jul 6 06:47:03 2004 From: rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com (Rajlakshmi Nesargi) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 18:17:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Are maps copyrightable? Message-ID: <20040706011703.36827.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> Speaking of which, does anyone know if street maps are copyrightable in India? AFAIK, US copyright law makes it very hard to copyright a map since the represented data is public domain. On the contrary US is very liberal on providing protection to any work that has di minimus spark of creativity. This has been further illustrated in Rockford Map Publishers Inc. v. Directory Services Co.,474 U.S. 1061 where the issue was if there is any copyright protection in maps which were principally drawn from numerical information in public land-title record books. The Court held the reasoning that the copyright laws protect any work that has di minimus of creativity involved in it and further that Copyright does not take into consideration the amount of effort expended. It was of interest to me and thought of sharing that Mozart took just 14 hours to create an entire piano concerto and that the Laffer Curve, an economic graph prominent in political debates, appeared on the back of a napkin after dinner, the work of a minute. These examples were stated to support the fact that Copyright does not take into consideration the amount of effort expended. Speaking of which, does anyone know if street maps are copyrightable in India? Approaching on same lines of reasoning provided in the above mentioned case I would say that any work that is present in public domain if given any di minimus creative touch can be claimed for copyright protection. So maybe you can work upon a Bangalore map and put in more details and make it more conveniently available like the one you mentioned, an online map resource that users can annotate -- mark one-ways, diversions, landmarks, resources, bus routes, cell towers, etc. -- and access from a mobile phone with GPRS or other means of Internet access. Afterall copyright covers only the incremental contribution and not the underlying information. Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201,74 S.Ct.460. I hope this answers your query. Best Rajlakshmi --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040705/c8643684/attachment.html From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jul 6 15:23:47 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 09:53:47 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] IOSN Releases Primer on Free/Open Source Software and Government Message-ID: <1089107626.586.13.camel@box> IOSN has produced a primer on Free/Open Source Software and Government and a pre-publication copy of the primer is now available for download for review and feedback. The end date for public feedback is 14th July. Please send feedback to sunil at apdip.net This primer is meant to serve as a resource for nations in the process of formulating their FOSS policies. This particular primer surveys the motivations of other countries in implementing FOSS, summarizes the steps involved in formulating a policy, lists some possible strategies to use in implementing the policy and finally touches on cross-sectoral issues unique to FOSS policies. Its target audience are the policy-makers who set national policies and their advisers. Download in OpenOffice format http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_gov_primer_v0_2.sxw Download in PDF format http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_gov_primer_v0_2.pdf Download in MS Word format http://www.iosn.net/downloads/foss_gov_primer_v0_2.doc Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP As FOSS Consultant - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From avinash at csdsdelhi.org Tue Jul 6 11:49:10 2004 From: avinash at csdsdelhi.org (Avinash Jha) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 11:49:10 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Networks and public domain Message-ID: <002c01c46320$b4d9ea60$a500a8c0@library> Dear Sunil You are right that Internet is in the public domain. It is technological-institutional network, like the railways for example, of which everyone (within cultural and socio-economic limits) can avail of. Internet is a public service network. As such, it creates conditions for formation of various social networks. My question was about these social networks actually and it is partially clarified now. If a social network is a public service network with certain norms and rules of accountability to the public, then we can say it is in the public domain. The context of my question is the notion of `network society' which is characterised by proliferation of networks based on the modern information infrastructure. Usually, there is a normative charge to this concept of `network society': that it promotes openness and so on. I think it is not tenable to associate `network society' with open society. Networks imply closure. - avinash __________________________________________________ Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040706/ec5427b7/attachment.html From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Tue Jul 6 12:25:48 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 23:55:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Are maps copyrightable? Message-ID: <20040706065548.40964.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Rajlakshmi I am not sure if I agree completely with your interpretation. Hasnt the Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone decision 499 U.S. 340 (1991) diluted the unchecked application of the de minimis doctrine. I am exracting a portion of the feist decision which may be pertinent. So with respect to a collection of facts we may require more than a de minimis standard. On the Indian position I have done a quick perusal of existing cases and have not found any cases that deal directly with maps, friends on the list, especially from Delhi may be able to help us out on this one. "[54] We conclude that the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist were not original to Rural and therefore were not protected by the copyright in Rural's combined white and yellow pages directory. As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity. Rural's white pages, limited to basic subscriber information and arranged alphabetically, fall short of the mark. As a statutory matter, 17 U.S.C. � 101 does not afford protection [p*364] from copying to a collection of facts that are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a way that utterly lacks originality. Given that some works must fail, we cannot imagine a more likely candidate. Indeed, were we to hold that Rural's white pages pass muster, it is hard to believe that any collection of facts could fail. Lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com Tue Jul 6 15:48:04 2004 From: rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com (Rajlakshmi Nesargi) Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 03:18:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] are maps copyrightable? Message-ID: <20040706101804.70221.qmail@web51607.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Lawrence, Im sure you will agree with me on the fact that the de minimus is a matter of fact concept rather than a matter of law concept. De minimus has been held at different levels in the Feist case and in Rockford Map Publications Inc.Further in the Ringgold v. Entertainment T.V., Inc., 126 F.3d 70 (2d Cir.1997) the concept of de minimus was discussed in detail. All said and done I do agree with you Lawrence that de minimus is a risky concept one should step on only if it is the last defence available especially after the decision on Feist case. Best Raj __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040706/d05af05d/attachment.html From rahul.matthan at trilegal.com Tue Jul 6 18:44:48 2004 From: rahul.matthan at trilegal.com (Rahul Matthan) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 18:44:48 +0530 Subject: Are maps copyrightable? (was Re: [Commons-Law] Kannada Fonts..) In-Reply-To: <9CC2DCBE-CE53-11D8-8A2A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> References: <1089036423.1127.187.camel@box> <9CC2DCBE-CE53-11D8-8A2A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> Message-ID: <40EAA5C8.1000606@trilegal.com> The creation of maps beyond a certain threshold scale are prohibited in India without the permission of the ministry of defense. While there is no law on the subject there are several administrative orders on the subject that put sweeping powers in the hands of the defense. Recently some liberalization of these norms has allowed digitization of map data but government agencies but regulations still pose a huge stumbling block. Which is probably why you didn't get any halfway decent map data. Rahul Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > On Jul 5, 2004, at 7:37 PM, Sunil Abraham wrote: > >> Indian Copyright Law with regard to Fonts >> 1. The design of a font per se cannot be copyrighted. As the law >> believes these exist in the public domain. > > > Speaking of which, does anyone know if street maps are copyrightable > in India? AFAIK, US copyright law makes it very hard to copyright a > map since the represented data is public domain, whereas in India, > making a map itself is illegal (circumvented by claiming the map is > not to scale), and hence the basis that the data is public domain does > not arise. > > There are currently no decent-quality street maps of any Indian city > available online or on CD at a reasonable cost. (The mapsofindia.com > maps don't qualify as decent quality.) Spatial Data (also known as SP > Info Soft) sells a map of Bangalore on CD, but it's only accessible > using their proprietary non-extensible browser. Eicher Goodearth makes > excellent maps of some cities, but these maps are only available in > print. > > I intend to setup an online map resource that users can annotate -- > mark one-ways, diversions, landmarks, resources, bus routes, cell > towers, etc. -- and access from a mobile phone with GPRS or other > means of Internet access. This is sort of like applying the Wiki > concept to street maps. Unfortunately, the biggest hurdle is in > obtaining basic map data to start with. > > I've considered making vector tracings of printed street maps, thereby > making the vector version a wholly new creation based on arguably > public domain data, but from what I can make out, Indian copyright law > isn't clear on whether this is a violation. > From mayur at justice.com Wed Jul 7 14:45:02 2004 From: mayur at justice.com (Mayur Rangaswamy Suresh ) Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 09:15:02 +0000 (America/Los_Angeles) Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: sarai proposal Message-ID: <20040707091502.10056.h52.wm@smtp.sc0.cp.net> ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Subject: From: mayur at justice.com Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2004 14:18:54 -0000 (Local time zone must be set--see zic manual page) To: rajlakshmi_nesargi at yahoo.com, commons-law at sarai.net Dear All, Here's the outline for my paper for the July workshop. Any comments appreciated. Thanks Mayur Section 1: regulation of the spaces and content of cinema. Given that the first regulations of video was through the mechanism of the cinematograph act and through state cinema regulation laws, the history of the regulation of cinema assumes significance. This section is largely based on Stephen Hughes piece titled “Policing Silent Film Exhibition in Colonial South India”. The emergence of cinema in India caught the colonial state off guard. The state feared what may come if natives were allowed to watch cinema. The colonial state’s first foray in the regulation of cinema was to regulate the cinematic spaces; theatres were gradually subject to more and more spatial regulation. The law began to specify the dimensions that a theatre should have, the number of bathrooms, types of seats, number of vents, the projection mechanism, etc. The state’s focus then broadened from controlling the spaces of cinema but also its content and began to use the tool of censorship. These two methods of policing cinema were carried forward by the state even after independence. Section 2: modernity and video technology. The introduction of video technology in the early 1980’s was a part of the greater plan to usher India into modernity. According to the older Nehruvian discourse, “modernity” was to be achieved through development. With its emphasis upon scientific thought and reason, this discourse allowed for no ambivalence, and was hence accompanied by the desire for the definiteness of order. With the State assuming paramount importance in ensuring order, everything was required to be subject to the panoptic gaze of the state. With the withdrawal of the state in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the development issue remained, but was reconstituted as a problem of communication (Ravi Sundram: 2004). Hence the state was no longer concerned with physical accumulation (steel, coal, etc) but is now concerned with the virtual spaces where the issue of development would be resolved. Section 3: decentralized media practices In this section I try to theorise the various cultural practices that came to surround video technology. Peter Manuel in Cassette Cultures, commenting on ‘new media’ states, that “they constitute a challenge to the one-way monopolistic, homogenising tendencies of the old media (especially cinema, television and radio). The new media tend to be decentralised in ownership and control, and consumption patterns; they offer greater potential for consumer input and interaction, and heighten the user’s control over the form of consumption and over the relation to the media sender.” Video technology challenged the states regulatory framework. The twin methods of controlling space and content of cinema proved inadequate for policing video. As stated by Manuel, video is decentralized in ownership, control and consumption patterns, making it virtually impossible to control the content and spaces of video. Practices surrounding video cassettes can be looked at from two different, though not exclusive views. One is that of content; the transmission of meaning is through the content of the video itself. Video has on occasion spoken to publics and counterpublics, and hence the content of video assumes significance. We can also look at the circulation of video technology as a cultural process, and constitutive acts in themselves. Hence Lee and LiPuma argue that “circulation is a cultural process, with its own forms of abstraction, evaluation, and constraint, which are created by the interactions between specific types of circulating forms and the interpretive communities built around them.” Key to both these approaches it the existence of a interpretive communities or publics. The idea of the ‘everyday’, the space in which “quotidian consumption, mobility and struggle are articulated”,can also be instrumental in understanding the challenges that are posed to the state’s regulatory apparatus. Section 4: the return of the state The sudden inability of the state in controlling video, lead the state to first seek the extension of the law regarding cinema to video. When this proved inadequate, the state resorted to the short-lived measure of requiring that all video cassette recorders be licensed. While this measure was quickly repealed, the incursion of the state into regulating video continued. Licenses were required to set up video parlours and video libraries. In those licenses, spatial requirements, censorship requirements, taxes to be paid, timings, and other areas controlling the everyday functioning of the video parlours and libraries were specified. ------- End of forwarded message ------- _________________________________________________ FindLaw - Free Case Law, Jobs, Library, Community http://www.FindLaw.com Get your FREE @JUSTICE.COM email! http://mail.Justice.com From joy at sarai.net Tue Jul 13 04:37:02 2004 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy) Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 04:37:02 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Unauthorized books featuring Harry Potter Message-ID: <40F31996.8090405@sarai.net> *Unauthorized books featuring Harry Potter* [http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Harry_Potter#Unauthorized_books_featuring_Harry_Potter] * Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon - originally in Chinese * Harry Potter Kolkataye (Harry Potter in Calcutta), by Uttam Ghosh, written in Bengali *Fan Fiction* Fan fiction refers to stories written by fans. There are innumerable fan fiction stories on the internet devoted to Harry Potter, and several sites dedicated to Harry Potter fan fiction (such as The Sugar Quill (http://www.sugarquill.net/) and FictionAlley (http://www.fictionalley.org/)). When asked about Fan Fiction, J. K. Rowling said "I've read some of it. I find it very flattering that people love the characters that much." She generally supports fan fiction (although she has asked that sites that contain fanfic with adult content password-protect the stories so children under 18 cannot access it). Many fan fiction stories "pair" different characters together in a romantic relationship, in order to show the author's support for that "ship" (ie: relationship). The relationships fans support and write about run from completely canon-based (such as Lily/James or Arthur/Molly), through the realms of the possible (such as Ron/Hermione) - and there is even a significant fan base for pairings that, if the currently available evidence is weighed, do not appear to have much chance of occurring in canon (such as stories containing homosexuality (slash), and Harry/Hermione, since the author has confirmed that they are "platonic friends" in an interview). An ongoing poll on Fiction Alley as to who Harry Potter will eventually be with currently stands at 45.96% believing it will be Ginny, 23.83% who believe that Harry will wind up with Hermione, 13.19% believing it will be Luna, despite an interview statement from JKR saying that Harry would wind up with someone who had been there from the beginning, and 8.94% maintaining that it will be nobody at all. When Rowling was asked if there would be any unusual pairings in the forthcoming books, she said, "I don't really want to say as it will ruin all the fan sites." Furthermore, she has also expressed some enjoyment over the "shipper debates" on her website (http://www.jkrowling.co.uk/). Fan-fiction and fan-cognition in general tend to have an interesting derivative view of themes and characters in the books. For example, some believe that the online fan crowd has much more sympathy for Draco Malfoy than the average fan. This has led to the rise of the characterization known as "Fanon Draco" or "Draco In Leather Trousers", which some fans find annoying and similar to a Mary Sue-ized canon character (also known as a Qanonreip, which comes from The Potter Sue Of The Day Report (http://www.livejournal.com/~pottersues) and is derived from "canon rape"). +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ *Potter in Calcutta' banned* Two unofficial Harry Potter books have been withdrawn from sale in India after demands from lawyers for author JK Rowling. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2988673.stm] Rowling demanded the withdrawal of both books and an apology from the publishers for using the Harry Potter name. One is an illegal Bengali translation of the first book, Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone but the other is a brand new text, starring the boy wizard but set in Calcutta. "Immediately after the Philosopher's Stone, Harry gets onto his Nimbus 2000 broom and zooms across to Calcutta at the invitation of young boy called Junto," leading Indian publisher Urvashi Butalia explained to the BBC World Service's The Ticket programme. "Then they get into all kinds of scrapes, they meet all kinds of people, and the story is built on from there." Phoenix delay They come across a whole bunch of literary characters from earlier Bengali fiction. Ms Betalia said the book's author had acted to fill in the long delay in the arrival of the fifth book in the series, The Order Of The Phoenix. "I think that children and young people have been waiting in India for 21 June - the date's been changed so many times - that this creative publisher just decided to fill in the time while Rowling was taking so long." It sold several thousand copies before it was stopped, with both books at several book fairs - including the large Calcutta book fair, the biggest literary event in Bengal. Author 'sad' Ms Betalia added that the author of the fake Potter book had been particularly upset at having his work removed from the shelves in India. "He's very affronted. "He seems to be very sad because he thinks he was doing a rather nice job. "He had several more lined up - lots of stories up his sleeve - so he's not really happy at all." Ms Betalia added: "The way the stories have been lifted out of Bengali literature and incorporated into Harry's adventures makes it very real for Bengali children." Unofficial versions of the books continue to be on sale around the world, however. They are especially popular in China, and in Russia, where the hero has changed sex and is known as Tanya Grotter. From dev.gangjee at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk Wed Jul 14 17:14:35 2004 From: dev.gangjee at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk (Dev Gangjee) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:44:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Potter related copyright issues In-Reply-To: <20040714100006.659EA28E308@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040714114435.D7FC4F4B9@webmail220.herald.ox.ac.uk> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040714/5033bf2d/attachment.pl From chetan at pobox.com Tue Jul 6 15:57:12 2004 From: chetan at pobox.com (Chetan Nagendra) Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 15:27:12 +0500 Subject: [Commons-Law] Are maps copyrightable? In-Reply-To: <20040706065548.40964.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20040706065548.40964.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1089107832.18730.199802872@webmail.messagingengine.com> Lawrence, AFAIR, the Feist decision was specific to telephone numbers present in the public domain and collated in the form of a telephone directory. The doctrine was never expanded to include copyright protection over other forms of collated public material. As you have quoted in your previous mail, the Court in Feist was of the opinion that just because the numbers are arranged alphabetically and in columns, the arrangement was not original and hence not copyrightable. The maps issue raised by Kiran is slightly different- the entire process involves annotating an existing map and adding information to it in a manner that is more presentable to users- in short, a customizable map. A user-customized map IMO, is copyrightable as it requires some original thinking to come up with an annotated map. OTOH, carrying a legend on a map is not original, and would fall within the Feist doctrine. In any event, it is debatable whether a map carrying a legend and distributed within India is protected by copyright. Chetan ----- Original message ----- From: "Lawrence Liang" To: commons-law at sarai.net Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2004 23:55:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: [Commons-Law] Are maps copyrightable? Dear Rajlakshmi I am not sure if I agree completely with your interpretation. Hasnt the Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone decision 499 U.S. 340 (1991) diluted the unchecked application of the de minimis doctrine. I am exracting a portion of the feist decision which may be pertinent. So with respect to a collection of facts we may require more than a de minimis standard. On the Indian position I have done a quick perusal of existing cases and have not found any cases that deal directly with maps, friends on the list, especially from Delhi may be able to help us out on this one. "[54] We conclude that the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist were not original to Rural and therefore were not protected by the copyright in Rural's combined white and yellow pages directory. As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity. Rural's white pages, limited to basic subscriber information and arranged alphabetically, fall short of the mark. As a statutory matter, 17 U.S.C. § 101 does not afford protection [p*364] from copying to a collection of facts that are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a way that utterly lacks originality. Given that some works must fail, we cannot imagine a more likely candidate. Indeed, were we to hold that Rural's white pages pass muster, it is hard to believe that any collection of facts could fail. Lawrence From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Wed Jul 14 19:20:46 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 06:50:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] piracy Links on the web Message-ID: <20040714135046.95700.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> Courtsey: Shuddhabrata Sengupta, the wily old data miner Piracy Links GENERAL In Defense of Piracy (Well, Some Piracy) http://www.macopinion.com/columns/curmudgeon/99/01/28.html Profits From Piracy (Sam Williams, Salon.com) http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/26/piracy_unlimited/index1.html Imitation Nation (Lisa Movius, Salon.com) http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/08/imitation_nation/index.html Social Trends in Music Piracy and File Sharing, by Stephen Busseti www.tcnj.edu/~bussett2/SchoolDocs/Social%20Trends%20in%20Music%20Piracy%20and%20File%20Sharing.doc - Timeline of Music Industry Efforts Against Piracy http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-09-08-riaa-timeline_x.htm Conflicts and Alliances Between Music and Technology (USA TODAY Index) http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/music-index.htm On Piracy and Privacy csdl.computer.org/comp/mags/co/2003/07/r7036.pdf Software Piracy - An Alternative View, Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/piracy Prime Suspect : A Story of Encryption, Piracy, Farce and the Film Industry http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/articles/issue10/lu10-True_stories-Prime_suspect.pdf PIRACY IN INDIA Screendigest.com Intelligence Report on DVD/CD piracy in India http://www.screendigest.com/online_services/intelligence/video_and_dvd/india/Video_Intelligence_India_18.stml/view Piracy of GM Seeds in India, report on BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2998150.stm India Urges Strong Action on Film Piracy in Asia http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3255726.stm Asian Pirates Take on Microsoft http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3255120.stm Indian Movie Pirates Targeted http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2847045.stm Software Piracy, The Scourge Worsens http://www.express-computer.com/20020909/indtrend1.shtml India Needs Stronger Policing to Stop Piracy http://in.tech.yahoo.com/020709/64/1rjl8.html http://computercops.biz/article1079.html Cyberpiracy in India http://www.indiainfoline.com/cyva/feat/sopi.html India's Piracy Crackdown http://www.ptcforum.org/ARTICLE%2020059.htm India Urges Malaysia to Curb Piracy http://www.ciol.com/content/enterprise/outsourcing/2003/103120201.asp Note on Piracy Situation in India by J F Ribeiro http://www.ciol.com/content/enterprise/outsourcing/2003/103120201.asp Alliance Cracks Whip on Software Piracy http://www.blonnet.com/2003/04/12/stories/2003041200730700.htm The Devang Mehta and Elephant Crushing CDs in Nehru Place Imagehttp://www.dewangmehta.com/photogallery/page2.htm# More Elephant Crushing CDs Image, from BBC Website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/331070.stm Study on Copyright Piracy in India by Ministry of Human Resource Development, India http://www.education.nic.in/htmlweb/cr_piracy_study/cpr.htm General Piracy History of Piracy off the West Coast of India http://www.thepiratesrealm.com/West%20India.html Bibliography on the Sociology of Piracy Associated Press, The. 2003. Timeline of Recording Industry Efforts against Piracy. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-09-08-riaa-timeline_x.htm. Blampain, Jeremy, Liliane Palut. 2000. Resistance on the Internet: Technological Utopia vs. Commercial Strategy. Contradictions. 2000-2001, 93; 5-159. Cooper, Jon and Daniel M. Harrison. 2001. The Social Organization of Audio Piracy on the Internet. Media, Culture & Society. 23, 1; 71-89. Jeffrey, Don. 1999. Who's buying what music, and where are they buying it? A survey of the current trends. Billboard. 111, 11; 63+. Reid, RA. Thompson J, Logsdon JM. 1992. Knowledge and attitudes of management students towards software piracy. Journal of Computer Information Systems. Fall; 46-51. Robinson, Laura and David Halle. 2002. Digitization, the Internet, and the Arts: eBay, Napster, SAG, and e-Books. Qualitative Sociology. 25, 3; 359-383. Shore, Barry, A.R. Venkatachalam, Eleanne Solorzano, Janice M. Burn; Syed Zahoor Hassan and Lech J. Janczewski. 2001. Softlifting and Piracy: Behavior across Cultures. Technology in Society. 23, 4; 563-581. Solomon SL, O'Brien JA. 1990. The Effects of demographic factors on attitudes toward software piracy. Journal of Computer Information Systems. Spring; 40-46. India's Piracy Crackdown, Ralph Cunningham Managing Intellectual Property, No 112, September 2001 Prevention of Film Piracy in India Taj Kunwar Paul (Amitabha Sen & Co, New Delhi) International Business Lawyer Vol 30 No 9 October 01, 2002 http://www.ibanet.org/general/ArticleDetails.asp?ID=723 ________________________________________An Internal Sarai List __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From jace at pobox.com Wed Jul 14 22:18:35 2004 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 22:18:35 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Potter related copyright issues In-Reply-To: <20040714114435.D7FC4F4B9@webmail220.herald.ox.ac.uk> References: <20040714114435.D7FC4F4B9@webmail220.herald.ox.ac.uk> Message-ID: On Jul 14, 2004, at 5:14 PM, Dev Gangjee wrote: > I recently read an article about an 'authorized' version of spiderman > donning a > dhoti and moving to Mumbai. > http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/02/1088488152585.html?oneclick=true Here's the official site, with illustrations: http://www.gothamcomics.com/spiderman_india/ And here's a comic aficionado's take on it (worth reading): http://www.livejournal.com/~beatzo/71386.html -- Kiran Jonnalagadda http://www.pobox.com/~jace From jace at pobox.com Thu Jul 15 12:35:37 2004 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 12:35:37 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Boing Boing: Canadian Creative Commons Licenses underway Message-ID: <5FA7AE04-D62D-11D8-B50A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/14/canadian_creative_co.html """ Canadian Creative Commons Licenses underway Andrew sez, "The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic is porting the Creative Commons licensing system to work under Canadian copyright law." Woohoo! Link (Thanks, Andrew!) """ Question for the lawyers: Are the current Creative Commons licenses applicable with Indian copyright law, or do they have to be adapted? Would an "Indianised" version continue to be applicable in the US? -- Kiran Jonnalagadda http://www.pobox.com/~jace From lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com Thu Jul 15 12:47:57 2004 From: lawrenceliang99 at yahoo.com (Lawrence Liang) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 00:17:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Commons-Law] Boing Boing: Canadian Creative Commons Licenses underway In-Reply-To: <5FA7AE04-D62D-11D8-B50A-000A95684A18@pobox.com> Message-ID: <20040715071757.87079.qmail@web52710.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Kiran We are currently working on an indian version of the CC license, there are a number of people who have expressed an interest and we will start coordinating this with a larger group, start a mailing list for discussion on it etc. ravikant form sarai comes to bangalore next weekend so we will have a discussion on the translation issues etc We can either have the discussion on commons-law or start a seperate list for it, since i am presuming that some of the discussions may become technical and a little boring for non lawyers. will keep the list posted on developemnts, and any person interested in helping out with the project, please mail me at lawrenceliang at vsnl.net Lawrence __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From joy at sarai.net Thu Jul 15 23:25:11 2004 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy) Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 23:25:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] MS found guilty of piracy !!! Message-ID: <40F6C4FF.1070106@sarai.net> *Microsoft found guilty of software piracy* [http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2001/12/h081201microsoft_softwarepiracy.html] A six-year old case regarding Microsoft's appropriation of SoftImage and their respective patents has now come to an ending, and the software giant has been found guilty of software piracy. Essential features of the SoftImage 3D animation package belong to a small French software developer, that has received no credit or royalty for its pioneer work. Microsoft itself, normally a verbose company when it comes to fighting software piracy, has refused all accusations and plans to appeal. Back in the early 1990s, a new CGI animation company called Syn'x Relief had just developed a new application for 3D animation. Character was a delicate piece of software that featured a wide selection of new technologies and techniques for achieving realistic animations, and Syn'x Relief was among the pioneers of 3D technology at that time. During this period, several prize-winning films were developed using Character software, and the small French software developer caught the attention of several big names in the movie industry. While Disney, George Lucas and Thomson Digital Image were interested in purchasing or licensing the technology behind Character, in the end, a developer called SoftImage managed to come to an agreement with Syn'x Relief for integrating the unique functions of Character into their own SoftImage 3D software. Unfortunately, it took two years before SoftImage came with a final deal. They now demanded that Syn'x Relief signs up all their rights and only earn royalties - royalties 55 percent lower than foreseen in the initial contract. Syn'x refused these terms but, in the meantime, SoftImage had been appropriated by Microsoft. In March 1995, Microsoft and Syn'x agreed to split - and Microsoft promised to remove all of Character's unique functionalities from SoftImage. However, only one of these were removed, while a total of eight still existed in SoftImage's modules. Even today, four of these functions are still unique for the market. After writing several letters to Microsoft demanding the removal of these functions, Syn'x saw itself forced to sue the company in November 1995. In 1996, Syn'x Relief was forced to file for bankruptcy - and today, four years later, the final sentence was given by a French court. Microsoft has been found guilty of software piracy, and has been sentenced to pay Syn'x 3 million francs - equal to about $200,000. Microsoft themselves have refused to admit any guilt, and are planning to appeal. Microsoft's muteness doesn't surprise Perrin: /"Since the start, we have been treated with disdain,"/ he said. /(Sources: Digit , SoftImage )/ From karim at sarai.net Mon Jul 19 17:29:11 2004 From: karim at sarai.net (Aniruddha Shankar) Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 17:29:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] interesting debate on the character of freedom Message-ID: <40FBB78F.9000207@sarai.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 For any department of the US Government to use GNU/Linux it has to be certified and cleared. LinuxJournal had an article[1] recently that spoke about how GNU/Linux had received this clearance... there was a fairly typical discussion on slashdot[2] except for one point. For the first time in memory, there was an actual discussion [3] on the prospect of instruments of state control using free software - was there any dissonance or was this the true nature of freedom ? What was interesting as well was an interview[4] with the Founder-President of the Los Angeles Linux Users Group who resigned over the use by the military of Linux, especially in the context of the Iraq war. free as in speech ? free as in beer ? free as in big brother ? [1] http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7678 [2] http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/17/1731200&tid=163 [3] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114828&threshold=0&commentsort=0&tid=163&mode=thread&cid=9726295 [4] http://technology.newsforge.com/technology/04/04/20/2229245.shtml - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFA+7eNhJkrd6A3rSsRAoxnAJ9JgZaCua5JgbnXbMdL6RXaPB0vrwCgiq3n Xh0fZhkRmsmH1me2pwuSExw= =MVg4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From dev.gangjee at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk Tue Jul 20 19:17:58 2004 From: dev.gangjee at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk (Dev Gangjee) Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 14:47:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] article on Rhetoric, Law, and the Future of F/OSS Production In-Reply-To: <20040707100007.73ACE28E222@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20040720134758.A31962A0E9@webmail222.herald.ox.ac.uk> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040720/668abbd4/attachment.pl From shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in Thu Jul 22 13:04:00 2004 From: shamnadbasheer at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Shamnad=20Basheer?=) Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 08:34:00 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: [Reader-list] copyright for fonts? In-Reply-To: <20040705100233.61267.qmail@web52703.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20040722073400.87481.qmail@web8202.mail.in.yahoo.com> Dear Lawrence and Sunil, Apologies for coming in a little late on this. Just a few words on the Indian position. 1. I remember a Delhi High Court case (Summit Technoligies) some years back that granted an ex-parte injunction against the copying of fonts by a news website in India. The court seemed to rely on the fact that on a mapping of the co-ordinates, the defendants fonts matched those of the plaintiff. However, there was no serious discussion of whether such fonts merited copyright protection in the first place. The matter was settled post this interim injunction-so we lost out on the final ruling. 2. The registrar of copyrights in 2002 (Zakir Thomas) held in a case before him (Ananda fonts) that a series of fonts comprising of Bengali alphabets were not copyrightable. I had read this judgment a long time back and these are my sketchy views from what I recollect of this case. The registrar seemed to base his decision on the following factors: i) The UK introduced a separate section for typefaces. Therefore, absent legislative intervention, one could not read in fonts and typefaces within the meaning of 'artistic works', as used in the Indian copyright act. ii) Even if they were artistic works, since they could be registered as a design, section 15 (2) of the copyright act barred their registration (since 50 reproductions of the same had already been done). While I tend to agree with the second bit of his reasoning, I have difficulties with the first. It seems that the term 'artistic works' is wide enough to cover fonts as well. Of course, there may be good policy reasons as to why these ought not to merit copyright protection in the first place-for this reason, perhaps, Zakir Thomas' argument could be made to turn on its head-absent legislative intervention (embodying these policy goals), fonts would be copyrightable as 'artistic works'. The UK section on typefaces also introduces specific defences on infringment-to provide greater leeway for the use of such typefaces by third parties-perhaps this was the real reason for specific legislative intervention and not so much an issue as to whether these could broadly be seen as copyrightable subject matter. One has to also remember in the context of the case above that under Indian law, registration is not a pre-requisite to copyright protection-copyright would subsist even absent registration (provided it is copyrightable subject matter in the first place). Regards-Shamnad --- Lawrence Liang wrote: > Hi all > > sending some notes which outlines the existing law > on > IP and fonts that i had made, the matter has now > fallen more under the relam of patent law than > copyright. I wold be happy to explain any of the > technical points if anyone finds it too cryptic > > > Lawrence > > > Fonts as intellectual Property > > > > Fonts- For purpose of law can be divided into > Typefaces; Fonts; and Font Formats > > 1. TYPE FACES and COPYRIGHT > > • Although technically an artistic work, type faces > have been denied copyright protection for number of > reasons > • Eltra v. Ringer – 1972- appellant sought to > register his fonts as works of art under ther > copyright act-: The office refused registration > stating that there “no elements, either alone or in > combination which can separately be identified as a > work of art” > • He appealed the decision > A typeface haad been defined by the Copyright act as > “a set of letters, numbers, or other symbolic > characters, whose forms are related by repeating > design elements consistently applied in a notational > system and are intended to be embodied > > • The court went into the utility question and > argued > that in the case of type faces the design and the > utility were so integrated that once could not argue > for it being an artistic work outside of its > utility. > > under s 5(g) to conform, (s 202.10(c), 37 C.F.R.): > "(c) If the sole intrinsic function of an article is > its utility, the fact that the article is unique and > attractively shaped will not qualify it as a work of > art. However, if the shape of a utilitarian article > incorporates features, such as artistic sculpture, > carving, or pictorial representation, which can be > identified separately and are capable of existing > independently as a work of art, such features will > be > eligible for registration." > > 2. TYPEFACES AND PATENT > > Adobe v. southern software-1998 > > • Adobe sued SS for copyright infringement; they > claimed that the defendant had used a font editor to > modify Adobe’s fonts > > Adobe contends that King loaded Adobe font software > programs into his computer then created his own 1555 > font software program by using FontMonger. > > FontMonger extracted reference points, or on-curve > points, and stored this information. FontMonger > stores > both existing on-curve points and off-curve points. > FontMonger does not copy any of the glyph > instructions; it inserts new glyph instructions. > However, the glyph instructions are implicit in the > sequence and nature of the glyph coordinates. Thus, > unless the on-curve points and off-curve points are > moved by the user, the glyph instructions written by > FontMonger will be functionally identical to those > of > the original font software program. Adobe contends > that after extracting all of the glyph coordinates > from the Adobe programs, King merely scaled the > coordinates 101% on the vertical axis in order to > change the font slightly. > > Adobe contends that the only difference between the > 1555 product and the 2002 product is that the value > of > each x coordinate has been increased by a uniform > amount and the advance widths have been changed > > Argument 1 > > • Defendant contended that a copyright infringement > existed only when there was a valid copyright that > subsisted in a work, and since there is no type > faces > are not copyrightable subject matter there cannot be > any infringement > • Adobe argued that a computer program produces > unprotectable typefaces does not make the computer > program itself unprotectable > > 1988 Copyright Office Policy Decision, the Copyright > Office determined that digitized typefaces were not > copyrightable because they were not computer > programs > and required little selection or arrangement beyond > that dictated by the uncopyrightable typeface > design. > ‘‘Policy Decision on the Copyrightability of > Digitized > Typefaces, ‘‘ 53 Fed. Reg. 38 1 lo-381 13 (September > 29, 1988). > > However, in 1992 the Copyright Office issued a final > regulation regarding the registrability of > ‘‘computer > programs that generate typefaces’’ which appears to > back off the 1988 policy decision: The 1992 > Regulation > states: bitmapped fonts are merely the computerised > representation of a typeface and not copyrightable. > Scalable fonts are different; > After a careful review of the testimony and the > written comments, the Copyright Office is persuaded > that creating scalable typefonts using already > digitized typeface represents a significant change > in > the industry since our previous Policy Decision. We > are also persuaded that computer programs designed > for > generating typeface in conjunction with low > resolution > and other printing devices may involve original > computer instructions entitled to protection under > the > Copyright Act. For example, the creation of scalable > font output programs to produce harmonious fonts > consisting of hundreds of characters typically > involves many decisions in drafting the instructions > that drive the printer. The expression of these > decisions is neither limited by the unprotectible > shape of the letters nor functionally mandated. This > expression, assuming it meets the usual standard of > authorship, is thus registrable as a computer > program. > • Coincidence of course that the 1992 regulations > came > into place after intense lobbying by Adobe systems > with congress > > Argument 2: Lack of originality or creativity > • Defendants argue that after one has filtered out > the > unprotectabie elements of plaintiffs software in > order > to compare what remains, one finds that minimal, if > any, protectable expression remains. > • Defendants argued that ‘‘merely manipulating an > unprotectable font image to create another, slightly > different (but still unprotectable) font image > cannot > possibly give rise to protectable expression....’’ > Defendants argued that no matter what points are > selected by the Adobe editor performing the process, > they correspond directly to, and hence are > determined > by, the unprotectable font shape. Therefore, because > the output is not protected and there cannot be any > creativity in what the editor does to obtain the > output, nothing is protectable > • Adobe argued that originality for the purpose of > copyright does not pertain to creative originality > but > to the point of origin and the threshold required > for > proving a work to be original is very low > • Adobe argued that “while the shape of the glyph > necessarily dictates some of the points to be chosen > to create the glyph, it does not determine all the > points to be chosen. Thus, each rendering of a > specific glyph requires choices by the editor as to > what points to select and where to place those > points. > Accordingly, Adobe asserts that the selection of > points and the placement of those points are > expression which is copyrightable in an original > font > output program. The actual code is dictated by the > selected points”. > • Court agreed thnd stated that “The evidence > presented shows that there is some creativity in > designing the font software programs. While the > glyph > dictates to a certain extent what points the editor > must choose, it does not dictate every point that > must > be chosen. Adobe has shown that font editors make > creative choices as to what points to select based > on > the image in front of them on the computer screen. > The > code is determined directly from the selection of > the > points. Thus, any copying of the points is copying > of > literal expression, that is, in essence, copying of > the computer code itself > > Argument 3: Patent claims > > Adobe is the owner of six design patents. Adobe’s > design patents are presumed valid; however, that > presumption may be overcome by clear and convincing > evidence to the contrary. Adobe asserts that > defendants have infringed the design patents. > > 1. Defendants assert that the patents are invalid > and > unenforceable as a matter of law, Defendants claim > that the patents are invalid because the font > designs > are non-statutory subject matter in violation of 35 > U.S.C. section 171 (requiring ‘‘original and > ornamental design for an article of manufacture’’) > in > that none of the design patents discloses an article > of manufacture. > 2. Defendants further assert that the patents are > invalid because the designs each lack the requisite > novelty and nonobviousness for patentability. > Defendants also claim that, in any event, the design > patents are unenforceable because Adobe willfully > failed to disclose prior art when applying for the > patents. > > Adobe contends, however, that the requisite article > of > manufacture in this case is the program which allows > the typeface to be rendered. The court in ex parte > Tavama, 24 U.S.P.Q.2d 1614, 1616 (Bd. Pat. App. & > Int. > 1992), after rejecting a claim for the ornamental > design of an icon, observed > Moreover, appellant asserted that affirmance of the > rejection will bring into question the validity of > numerous design patents directed to type fonts. We > disagree. The phrase ‘‘type font’’ may be properly > interpreted as referring to letter blocks or pieces > used in a conventional printing press. The blocks or > pieces constitute an article or articles of > manufacture. Unlike the designs here, which are > stated > to be surface ornamentation, type font designs are > reasonably interpreted to be the shape or > configuration of the letter blocks. The fact that > the > meaning of ‘‘type font’’ may have expanded in usage > to > include letters or numbers appearing on paper or on > a > computer screen does not invalidate the > long-standing > interpretation of type font designs as > configuration-type designs or pieces or blocks of > type. > 24 U.S.P.Q. 2d at 1618. Based upon the reasoning of > Tayama, type fonts are patentable subject matter and > the program which creates the type fonts is the > article of manufacture.12 Accordingly, the court > finds > that the typeface designs are statutory subject > matter > entitled to patent protection. > > • On the issue of whether or not there was > disclosure > and prior art, the court found that there issues of > facts which were triable and had to be reconsidered. > • The decision of the court is now on appeal. > > Impact of Adobe v. southern software > • While traditionally type faces were held to be > uncopyrightable , the impact of the adobe case by > granting patent protection to the type face it is in > effect a protection of the type face and more > > Jonathan Mezrich: “ In light of Adobe, the extension > of copyright law to fonts will have a profound > impact > on the software industry. Adobe has a history of > aggressively setting software standards: initially > in > the realm of desktop publishing and recently in the > area of web publishing and web page design. > Moreover, > Adobe has entered licensing agreements > with IBM, Apple, and Microsoft that likely will lead > to implementation of Adobe > technology and standards in these companies’ future > products. > > Because these new products will utilize > Adobe-generated fonts and will require related > programs and peripherals to mimic the same > standards, > Adobe will reap enormous benefits either for as long > as the standard persists or until their copyrights > expire. In light of the Adobe holding, Adobe > apparently will be able to charge a licensing fee > for > its web > design and publishing software as well as for the > underlying fonts. Companies wishing to create > software > for platforms utilizing the Adobe standard will have > to pay a licensing fee to Adobe or forego satisfying > customers utilizing these major platforms such as > IBM, > Apple, and Microsoft). > > > 3. FONT FORMAT AND PATENT/ COPYRIGHT > > - What is the impact of the Adobe case for font > formats? > - Can font formats either be copyrighted, patented > or > protected under any form of IP? > > 3.1 Copyright and the idea/ expression dichotomy > > • Baker v. selden – and the double entry ledger > system- utility argument > > 3.2 Software Patents > > • Initial position of the patent office was to > outright reject applications for software patents > • Early instance of whether an invention consisting > of > mathematical algorithm is patentable subject matter > arose in Gottschalk v. Benson (1972) – “We conclude > that one may not patent an idea. The mathematical > formula involved here has no substantial practical > application except in connection with a digital > computer which means that if the judgement below is > affirmed, the patent would wholly pre empt the > mathematical formula and in effect would be a patent > o > the algorithm itself” > • “it is conceded that one may not patent an idea. > But > that would be the result if the formula were to be > allowed to be patented in this case”. > • This did not stop people from attempting to patent > software and the 70’s saw a number of applications > for > special purpose computers. In Flook (1978), the > court > held that a patent on a method of calculating am > alarm > limit controlling the temperature was unpatentable > because the only novel part of the invention was a > mathematical formula. > • In Diamond v. Diehr (1981), the court however held > that the patent was framed not as a method of > calculating a number but of curing rubber. The fact > that the method used a formula to compute > temperature > and that the use of that formula in a computer was > the only novel part of the invention did not render > the process as a while unpatentable. > • The US court of appeals created a two part test > known as the Freeman-Walter-Abele test: > > o First determine whether a patent claim recites an > algorithm directly or indirectly > o If it does, then is the claimed invention as a > whole > no more than ther algorithm itself? > • After the establishment of this test, patent > claims > started describing themselves as part of a process > rather than as a algorithm itself. > • In Re Allapat- The invention will read on a > general > purpose computer programmed to carry out the claimed > invention, but the claim is patentable nonetheless > because “such programming creates a new machine, > because a general purpose computer in effect becomes > a > special purpose computer once it is programmed to > perform specific functions pursuant to instruction > form programmed software” > • Is this not true of any program? > • There was still confusion however after the > Allapat > decision , for instance in In re Lowry, abstract > claims to a type of software adapt structure where > objects a arranged complex manner was held to be > patentable , while in In Re Warmerdam, a process > claim > was rejected since trhe mathematical algorithm is > implicit in the claim that is made. > • The US PTO then issued the 1996 guidelines > > Although most software related inventions are now > statutory under these guidelines, it is important to > remember that "software" as a class is not > patentable. > What is patentable are "processes" and "machines". > Thus the guidelines are framed so as to assist in > determining when computer related inventions are > patentable processes or machines. > According to the new guidelines, computer programs > that have traditionally been held to be statutory > will > continue to be statutory without further analysis. > These "safe harbor" inventions include two types of > inventions: > > Those having "significant post solution activity", > meaning that the software program is used to control > something external to the software routine (such as > curing rubber), and > those having "pre-computer process activity", > meaning > software programs that manipulate numbers > representing > concrete, real world values (such as > electrocardiograph signals and seismic measurements. > > > In addition to these safe harbor inventions, a > computer related invention will be statutory if it > is > claimed in connection with a specific machine or > product. This can be accomplished by defining > specific > code segments or routines in the patent application, > or by claiming the invention in connection with a > specific type of computer or memory structure. What > is > not important is the type of computer program > involved. Thus, while it is clear that a program > designed to improve communication speed over a modem > is statutory subject matter, it is equally clear > that > a graphics program, a spreadsheet, and a word > processing program are statutory when properly > claimed. > > The disjuncture between the reality and the law: > With over 40,000 software patents in force and > several > thousands being issued every year, the law seems to > be > left far behind. > The “cognitive dissonance” that results between > what > the law is and the actual practice has been suggests > that the law can be expected to change or that a > large > number of issued patents will have to be held to be > invalid. > > > • State Street v. Signature- business process > patent- > a mathematical algorithm may be an integral part of > a > patentable subject matter such as a machine oro a > process if the claimed invention as a whiolke is > applied in any useful manner > > Even after establishing that it is patentable > subject > matter you will still have to pass the test of > whether > or not it satisfies the other requirements of as > valid > patent namely: > 1. Novelty > 2. Non Obviousness > 3. Prior Art > > Fair Use defence > > Sec. 52[(aa) > > [(ab) the doing of any act necessary to obtain > information essential for operating > inter-operability > of an independently created computer programme with > other programmes by a lawful possessor of a computer > programme, provided that such information is not > otherwise readily available; > (ac) the observation, study or test of > functioning of the computer programme in order to > determine the ideas and principles which underline > any > elements of the programme while performing such acts > necessary for the functions for which the computer > programme was supplied; > > Conclusion > > 1. idea/ expression dichotomy v. reality of software > patents > 2. The movement towards meta copyright _ DMCA and > anti > circumvention technology > 3. The movement away from copyright to contractual > modes of protection > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam > protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law ________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs online Go to: http://yahoo.naukri.com/ From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Jul 24 16:51:35 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 11:21:35 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] GNU General Public License is valid under German copyright and contract law Message-ID: <1090668095.671.3.camel@box> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/23/1558219 Axel Metzger writes "The Munich District Court has ruled on May 19, 2004 that the main clauses of the GNU General Public License are valid under German copyright and contract law. This seems to be the first judgment worldwide proofing the validity of the most popular free software license. The ruling is a confirmation of the preliminary injunction of April 2, 2004. The new judgment gives on 20 pages the reasons for the ruling. It states explicitly that the terms of section 2, 3 and 4 of the GPL are valid under German copyright and contract law. Here is the German text of the judgment; an English translation will be available soon. The judgment comes at the right time to fight those (SCO and others) who challenge the legal validity of the GPL in Europe and elsewhere. The lawyer of the plaintiffs, Till Jaeger from Munich should be granted the Free Software Award." Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP Manager - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jul 27 15:38:05 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:08:05 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Patents in an open source world Message-ID: <1090922884.616.6.camel@box> Patents in an open source world Monday July 26, 2004 (12:53 PM GMT) By: Lawrence Rosen http://trends.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/07/22/201217&tid=147&tid=110&tid=132 Open source appears challenged by patents but that fear is often exaggerated. Lawrence Rosen, technology attorney and author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall, 2004), offers a calming view of the patent situation. He describes reasonable steps we can take to prevent patents from interfering with software freedom. The "Chicken Little" syndrome Does the dramatic increase in the number of software patents portend a catastrophe for open source software? Some argue that the threat of patents is vastly overstated. They point out that, while there are from time to time serious assertions of software patents, patent litigation is in practice very rare. This reflects both the high cost of such litigation and the difficulty of winning. It is true that obtaining a patent is much easier than having to prove its validity in court. A patent is awarded by civil servant patent examiners in a government office based on limited information, whereas litigation involves skilled software experts and patent attorneys who leave no stones unturned to find prior art or other legal arguments for invalidity. The presumption of validity evidenced by a plaque from the Patent Office can be overcome by clear and convincing evidence that the patent is invalid. Companies recognize that they should assert patent infringement only of patents whose validity is clear. Ultimately, though, there will be valid software patents (at least in the United States). We should presume that at least some valid software patents have been granted covering the technology now included in open source software. Measuring the risk of patents just by remembering the benign past ignores the simple fact that assertions of infringement of a few valid patents directed toward such important open source products as Linux, Apache, the Mozilla browser or Open Office could seriously damage our businesses. A successful patent assertion can force us to pay royalties we can't afford or require us to cease making, using or selling an infringing product. The risks, while small, must be assessed and addressed. Quality or quantity Can the open source community create its own patents? The people commonly referred to as the "open source community" - in this instance meaning the hackers and developers who write much open source software -- can never generate the number of patents obtained by the big patent powerhouse companies. Filing patent applications simply takes too much time and costs too much money. Another problem is that good patents aren't typically recognized to be valuable until many years after the invention. Investing time and money to secure patents is itself a high-risk venture requiring the kind of capital not available in garages and home offices. Big companies apply a different strategy. They invest heavily to obtain many patents in many areas, betting that at least a few of them will prove to be valuable in the future. This is not to say that big companies scatter inventive buckshot at random. They invent in areas of technology that are important to their business strategies. And then they hope that some of their inventions will become important and valuable enough to pay back their investments in many other worthless patents and inventions. Quantity leads to occasional quality, and to potentially huge profits from legal monopolies or royalties. Scanning for asteroids Which patents will affect us? Someday a huge asteroid will hit the Earth - it has happened more than a few times before in the history of our planet. Now that technology has made the search for near-Earth asteroids a reasonable activity, our astronomers are conducting methodical and often automated searches of the sky. Whether we can then avoid what we discover is a secondary problem that is the subject of frightening science fiction. The search for patents infringed by open source software has many of the same characteristics. We're convinced we may someday be hit by patent infringement lawsuits. Therefore we conduct searches, although in our case the technology for searching patent portfolios is still mostly a manual procedure. And then, when we find an infringed patent, what shall we do to avoid or compensate for it? Just as asteroids are more likely to arise in the asteroid belt, so patents are more likely to arise in the companies that directly compete against our open source software. Knowing where to look dramatically helps narrow the search. That is why we search the patent portfolios of operating system software companies for patents that might cover Linux; it is the most likely place to find such patents. Unlike the semi-automated scans of source code that can detect certain types of copyright infringement, there is no computerized scanner for patent infringement. There are only two ways to find such patents: 1. Wait for one to hit us 2. . Conduct a laborious and expensive manual search through the thousands of patents issued to our likely adversaries. Which option we pursue depends on our assessment of the risk compared to the cost of a search. The second alternative, in which we search for infringement, is laborious and expensive. Doing it right requires careful analysis by technical and legal experts who carefully compare the functions performed by software (not its code!) to the written claims of each patent. The arcane but precise language of patents and intellectual property law makes this a job for the highly skilled. Most open source projects, and even most commercial software companies, simply cannot afford to conduct rigorous patent searches. But the high cost of conducting a rigorous search doesn't excuse the failure to conduct any search at all. Companies have an obligation to their customers, and perhaps even a duty under the law, to act with reasonable diligence. The standards for reasonable diligence depend intricately on assessments of value and risk. The bar is probably higher for a fundamentally important software product like Linux that is an essential component of modern computing than it would be for a simpler open source project with limited users. Our publicly-traded commercial partners who contribute to and redistribute open source software may have legal obligations to undertake patent searches in order to identify and publicly disclose material business risks relating to patents. The cost of intellectual property protection rises as the value of the intellectual property itself goes up. Avoidance Can we avoid patented technology altogether? Some engineers wishfully assert that there is prior art for every software patent (if only we could find it), and that we can design around any software patent (given enough time and engineering resources). This is not always true in the real world. There are occasionally original ideas that result in fundamental patents that simply cannot be designed around given reasonable time and money. But in that "real world," those engineers are often enough right to justify our looking for prior art or designing around a software patent. Finding prior art or designing around a patent can completely resolve assertions of patent infringement. We should put our engineers and software experts to work as soon as we know or reasonably suspect that we've got prior art to find or a patent to design around. Do we take this path after we receive a cease-and-desist letter, or before? One advantage to a methodical patent search early in the product development and distribution cycle is that it gives us time to prepare for patent assertions and resolve them one way or another. We can change our software before our customers become enamored of a patented feature, or we can find prior art to invalidate a patent through patent reexamination procedures much less costly than patent litigation. If we wait until patent infringement lawsuits are filed, we may not have time to respond appropriately. The open source community also has a unique opportunity to create prior art by publishing its own inventions sooner so that we won't face patent infringement lawsuits later. As an important side-effect of open source software, prior art is documented and date-stamped automatically by services like SourceForge. And with rigorous audit trails like the OSDL Developer's Certificate of Origin, ownership of prior art can be proven. These records are a fundamental part of our methodical process of searching for, and subsequently avoiding, software patents. MAD Can we defend against patents by preparing to go on the offense? During the cold war, nuclear catastrophe was averted by a policy of mutually assured destruction ("MAD"). If any country dared to start a nuclear war, the theory went, the devastation wreaked upon that country would be many times worse. Not just the nuclear powers were so protected. Through treaties and alliances, the allies of the great powers survived under a defensive MAD shield. So too, in the field of patents, do large patent portfolios serve the role of stockpiled nuclear weapons. If a company with a large portfolio is sued, it will likely own other patents that are essential to the company that dared to sue. "Sue me," they say, "and I'll sue you back even worse for patent infringement." In this way, a patent portfolio can be a defense to litigation, because few will dare sue and risk their own destruction. Big companies, however, don't usually treat patents like nuclear weapons against their major competitors. Instead, they license their patent portfolios in return for cross-licenses to their competitors' patent portfolios. This removes the competitors' arsenals from use for both offensive and defensive purposes, leaving the cross-licensed companies free to operate with a reduced fear of patent litigation. Because such cross-licenses between big patent owners are usually closely-held trade secrets, it is not easy for us to know if open source allies will be able or willing to use their patents to defend open source software. We simply don't know if we're shielded by the MAD patent portfolios of our best friends. Withholding the candy What can we trade in exchange for freedom from patent lawsuits? Open source projects don't have patent portfolios for use in cross-licensing negotiations or for retaliation in the event of patent lawsuits. But we do have our valuable software. Many open source licenses now contain a defensive termination provision by which the license to the software terminates if the licensee sues the licensor for patent infringement. There are subtle differences among these termination provisions in the various open source licenses. For example, the GPL's section 7 provides that a licensee has no right to distribute the software if the distributor is subject to patent restrictions that would contradict the GPL's conditions. A more straightforward provision in the OSL/AFL version 2.1 licenses simply terminates the plaintiff's copyright and patent licenses to the software if he/she sues the licensor or any other licensee alleging that the licensed software infringes a patent. The CPL and MPL, as befits open source licenses by major patent holders, terminate only patent grants and not copyright grants; such licenses act more like patent-for-patent cross-licenses than patent defense provisions. Regardless of the details, the objective of these open source licenses is to prevent a licensee from enjoying the benefits of the open source software while simultaneously suing for patent infringement. Since each open source license contains a subtly different termination provision, its value as a defense must be individually assessed. For example, the GPL's termination provision is not an effective defense unless the plaintiff is a distributor. And none of these in-the-license defense provisions, including the GPL, OSL/AFL, CPL or MPL, will help if a plaintiff isn't a licensee who makes, uses or sells the open source software. Companies can also be encouraged to trade their patent rights in exchange for the huge benefits of cooperative industry standards. The mandatory patent licensing provisions of standards bodies like W3C help to ensure that open source software that implements industry standards is shielded from patent litigation. When companies cooperate to develop royalty-free standards free of patent encumbrances, open source and proprietary software can flourish. Summary I've identified what I believe to be the key components of a comprehensive strategy to deal with an uncertain patent threat. We need to evaluate the efficacy of each of them in our environment. There is no single way to emasculate our enemies' patent portfolios or to eliminate the inherent risks of using software in a world that allows software patents. Here's a summary of what I recommend: 1. Don't be too paranoid about the patent problem. It's a real problem, but not a catastrophe. Any patent owner that tries to assert its patents against open source software has many hurdles to leap before the royalty checks start to arrive. 2. Don't try to out-invent the big guys. The open source community can't possibly compete in the patent generating business. But we can continue to document our own "prior art" to prevent others from patenting things they weren't the first to invent. 3. Conduct a reasonably diligent search for patents we might infringe. At least search the portfolios of our major competitors. (This, by the way, is also a great way to make sure we're aware of important technology advances by our competitors.) Maintain a commercially reasonable balance between doing nothing about patents and being obsessed with reviewing every one of them. 4. Design around patented technology wherever possible. The longer our lead time the easier this is to do, so do # 3 early in the design and development process. 5. Identify allies who can defend us with their patent shields. We have important friends whose patent portfolios might be cross-licensed under terms that provide additional protection for certain open source products. 6. Withhold our software from those who sue us for patent infringement. Choose open source licenses that implement a strong defensive termination provision. Support royalty-free patent policies by industry standards organizations, and adopt only royalty-free standards. Lawrence Rosen is founding partner of Rosenlaw & Einschlag, 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 (www.rosenlaw.com). Mr. Rosen is an attorney specializing in technology, and the author of "Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law" (Prentice Hall, 2004). Mr. Rosen is a former computer professional who taught programming and managed several computer departments at Stanford University. He has served as general counsel and secretary of Open Source Initiative (OSI) and as its executive director, and has written several major open source licenses. He advises companies and individuals throughout the world on open source licensing and related legal issues. C Copyright 2004 Lawrence Rosen. Licensed under the Academic Free License version 2.1. Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP Manager - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From sudhir75 at hotmail.com Wed Jul 28 11:28:20 2004 From: sudhir75 at hotmail.com (sudhir krishnaswamy) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 05:58:20 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Music Wars Message-ID: RealNetworks breaks Apple's hold on iPod By John Borland, CNET News.com Monday, July 26 2004 11:27 AM http://asia.cnet.com/newstech/personaltech/0,39001147,39188073,00.htm RealNetworks is expected to announce Monday that it has unlocked some of Apple Computer's most tightly held technology secrets, giving its music a way onto the popular iPod digital music player. The announcement is part of a broader release of RealNetworks software, which will let songs sold from the company's online store play on a variety of portable devices, including the iPod and Microsoft-compatible rivals. RealNetworks has been selling songs from its digital song store since January, but the files could previously be played only on a few portable devices. The new Harmony software, which RealNetworks said mimics the proprietary copy protection used in Apple's iTunes store, is sure to be controversial. Apple has previously refused to provide licenses to companies seeking iPod compatibility, and RealNetworks did not seek permission before releasing its own version of iPod-friendly software. "This is actually a natural extension to a decision we made two years ago with respect to different formats," said RealNetworks Chief Strategy Officer Richard Wolpert. "We think consumer choice is going to win out over proprietary formats." RealNetworks' move marks a step away from what had been an increasingly confusing world of incompatible digital music formats and devices. Record companies and consumer groups have been deeply critical of technology companies' decision to tie certain devices to specific music formats. Traditionally, CDs and DVDs have worked on any manufacturers' players, they note, while music downloads have been tied to specific brands of devices. Indeed, several record company executives praised RealNetworks' independent steps to achieve compatibility with the iPod, even without Apple's consent. "Up to now, the world of downloads has been far too close to a world where the CD you buy in one store wouldn't play on the CD player you bought in another," Larry Kenswil, president of Universal Music's eLabs division, said in a statement. "We applaud RealNetworks' efforts to help correct this situation and appeal to all people and companies in this area to work toward a world of universal interoperability." Apple did not return requests for comment. Apple maintains a dominant market share in the music download business, and RealNetworks hopes that the new compatibility with the iPod will help drive customers to its online store. Dangerous ground? RealNetworks has previously thumbed its nose at rivals in a similar way. Its 2002 Helix server, which sends media files out over the Internet, included the ability to stream Microsoft-formatted files--a capability only Microsoft servers previously had. Last January, RealNetworks also announced that it had figured out how to let its PC software play songs purchased from Apple's iTunes store and save them onto the iPod. The new Harmony software's ability to work with Microsoft devices is fairly straightforward. When a customer buys a song from RealNetworks' online store, the software will check what kind of portable device is attached to the computer and change the song into Microsoft's format if necessary. Microsoft has provided licenses to its Windows Media technology to many companies. Harmony also will automatically change songs into an iPod-compatible format. But because Apple has not licensed its FairPlay copy-protection software to anyone, RealNetworks executives said its engineers had to re-create their own version in their labs in order to make the device play them back. Although the company said this action wasn't technically "reverse engineering," the software could trigger intense legal scrutiny. The license accompanying Apple's iPod says purchasers cannot "copy, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, (or) attempt to derive the source code of" the software. Boston patent attorney Bruce Sunstein said courts have issued mixed opinions on how much reverse engineering is allowed for purposes such as making compatible products. "The law is unsettled," Sunstein said. "We might find some litigation if Apple wanted to be aggressive." Indeed, lawsuits have been sparked by similar previous cases. In one famous example, Atari Games subsidiary Tengen created cartridges that worked with Nintendo's NES game machine in the late 1980s, when Nintendo was barring any other company from doing so. Nintendo sued and won when it was discovered that Tengen had obtained part of Nintendo's software code from the U.S. Copyright Office and used it to make its games compatible. RealNetworks has staunchly maintained that it has not illegally used any of Apple's copyrighted software code, however. "We certainly feel we have all the licenses and rights to do what we've done or we wouldn't have done it," RealNetworks' Wolpert said. Analysts welcomed the move as a good step for consumers, who would be able to buy music from RealNetworks' store and not worry about having to stay permanently with one brand of player to use music purchased online. "Right now if you're a consumer, you have to pick sides," said Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff. "With every track you buy you're going further down the path of incompatibility...This is going to create some pressure on Microsoft and Apple to provide similar levels of interoperability." The Harmony software will be available in test form on RealNetworks' site Monday, and will ultimately find its way into a variety of products, the company said. _________________________________________________________________ Get head-hunted by 10,000 recruiters. http://go.msnserver.com/IN/46246.asp Post your CV on naukri.com today. From sunil at mahiti.org Wed Jul 28 21:07:42 2004 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 15:37:42 +0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Patents in an open source world Message-ID: <1091029062.651.384.camel@box> Thanks to Patrice from the hippies from hell mailing list. Thanks, Sunil -----Forwarded Message----- From: patrice at xs4all.nl > ----- Forwarded message from Sunil Abraham ----- [quoting a patent attorney, who writes...] > Here's a summary of what I recommend: > > 1. Don't be too paranoid about the patent problem. It's a real > problem, but not a catastrophe. Any patent owner that tries to assert > its patents against open source software has many hurdles to leap before > the royalty checks start to arrive. It's unlikely that authors of free software are in a position to send many royalty checks. It's much more likely that they'll stop developing software altogether. I expect this to lead to less innovation rather than more. Threat of litigation is much more effective than ligitagion, especially against smaller players, and also if the case is not that strong, an empty threat can still be very expensive to prove to be empty. > 2. Don't try to out-invent the big guys. The open source community > can't possibly compete in the patent generating business. But we can > continue to document our own "prior art" to prevent others from > patenting things they weren't the first to invent. This sounds like out-inventing them. Perhaps the author confuses patenting with inventing? Who will foot the multi-million lawyer bill that will arise out of the need to present all that prior art to a court in the case of a lawsuit - time and time again? [snip more advice] How about not starting with software patents in the first place? Then we neatly avoid all this idiocy that leads to wishful thinking like yours ("Yes, maybe it won't be as bad as some think it might be if we play nice!"). Free software has changed the IT industry. Now the big companies that push proprietary technology are pulling initiative back to them. We shouldn't allow this to happen; don't play to their rules by trying to live with dreadful proposals such as software patents, but fight these attempts at suffocating innovation and competition tooth and nail. -- Niels. - ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Re: Patents in an open source world From: "Inez" Date: Tue, July 27, 2004 6:06 pm To: discussion at hippiesfromhell.org - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- On 27.07.2004 16:27:26 (+0000), Niels Bakker wrote: > > ----- Forwarded message from Sunil Abraham ----- > [quoting a patent attorney, who writes...] > > Here's a summary of what I recommend: > > > > 2. Don't try to out-invent the big guys. The open source community > > can't possibly compete in the patent generating business. But we can continue to document our own "prior art" to prevent others from patenting things they weren't the first to invent. > > This sounds like out-inventing them. Perhaps the author confuses patenting with inventing? Well, I guess he means existing work. So if it was out-inventing, it has already been done and not on purpose. > How about not starting with software patents in the first place? Then we neatly avoid all this idiocy that leads to wishful thinking like yours ("Yes, maybe it won't be as bad as some think it might be if we play nice!"). Problem is, it's the other party that uses patents. The aim of this piece is to tell free/open/whatever software people how they may deal with this. You don't need to tell _them_ not to use patents, and the other party is probably not the target audience. Inez. Thanks, ಸುನೀಲ್ - -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mobile: +91 80 36701931 Currently on sabbatical with APDIP/UNDP Manager - International Open Source Network Wisma UN, Block C Komplex Pejabat Damansara. Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights. 50490 Kuala Lumpur. P. O. Box 12544, 50782, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (60) 3-2091-5167, Fax: (60) 3-2095-2087 sunil at apdip.net http://www.iosn.net http://www.apdip.net From annymcbeal at rediffmail.com Fri Jul 30 11:54:42 2004 From: annymcbeal at rediffmail.com (anuranjan s) Date: 30 Jul 2004 06:24:42 -0000 Subject: [Commons-Law] presentation draft! Message-ID: <20040730062442.25836.qmail@mailweb34.rediffmail.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040730/7504d457/attachment.html -------------- next part --------------  hi everyone, i am attaching with this mail my presentation draft of the July workshop in bangalore for ur consideration. since the file is big, i can't paste it on to the list so i am attaching it. in case anyone faces a problem in opening the file, i would be keen on sending the file individually, please feel free to mail. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 2nd_paper.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 76123 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040730/7504d457/attachment.pdf From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat Jul 31 15:17:03 2004 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 15:17:03 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Call for Papers :: Contested Commons/Trespassing Publics Message-ID: <410B6A97.3090008@sarai.net> *Call for Papers * *Contested Commons/Trespassing Publics :: * A Conference on Inequalities, Conflicts and Intellectual Property 6th - 8th January 2005 in New Delhi, India. The past few years have seen conflicts over the regulation of information; knowledge and cultural materials increase in intensity and scope. This conflict has widened to include new geographical spaces, particularly China, India, South Africa and Brazil. Moreover, a range of new problems, including the expansion of intellectual property protection to almost all spheres of our social life, has intensified the nature of the conflict. It is important to recognize that the nature of the conflict gets configured differently as we move from the United States and Europe to social landscapes marked by sharp inequalities in Asia, Latin America and Africa. In the light of these transformations, we would like to revisit earlier discussions on creativity, innovation, authorship, and the making of property. Is it possible to draw comparative registers between earlier histories of violence and dispossession that accompanied the making of property, and the current turbulence around intellectual property on world scale? In this conference, we would like to push comparative discussions between earlier and contemporary moments of dispossession and criminalisation, between the open source movement and discussions on traditional knowledge and biodiversity. We would also like to build a dialogue between different moments in media history: print, film, music and the new media, so as to prise open questions around culture, circulation and property. This conference aspires to interrogate the philosophical persuasions, cultural dynamics, political economy and legal grids that constitute the contemporary consensus. This cross-disciplinary conference will bring together people from different areas of study: law, history, sociology, literature, anthropology, development and cultural studies, film and media studies. The conference is organised by Sarai (www.sarai.net), a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), Bangalore. Sarai's research programme focuses on urban culture and the media, while ALF is a collective of critical legal researchers and practitioners based in Bangalore. Sarai and ALF have been collaborating on research and practice in the domain of 'Knowledge and Culture Commons' over the last two years. Abstracts of three hundred words (300) are invited. The abstracts may address anyone of the above themes. We will support travel and board of all selected participants resident in the South. Last date for submission of abstracts is the 15th of September 2004 Please mail your abstracts to -------------- Conference Editors: >From Sarai/CSDS: Jeebesh Bagchi, Ravi Sundaram >From ALF: Lawrence Liang, Sudhir Krishnaswamy -------------------------- Sarai Center for Study of Developing Studies (CSDS) 29, Rajpur Road Delhi 110054, India Ph: 91 11 23960040 Fax: 91 11 23943450 Email: Alternative Law Forum (ALF) 122/4 Infantry Road, Bangalore 560 001, Karnataka Phone: 91 80 22865757 Email: --------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20040731/ec142661/attachment.html