From pranesh at cis-india.org Tue Mar 3 15:08:56 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 15:08:56 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bruce Perens: Analyzing Microsoft's TomTom Lawsuit In-Reply-To: <1236035932.25447.2.camel@green> References: <1236035932.25447.2.camel@green> Message-ID: <4785f1e20903030138u2baf8e77te1fdf9bf59907e08@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, Bruce Perens presents his incisive analysis of the TomTom lawsuit, the patents involved, Microsoft's strategy (he thinks it's FUD, and that MS expects TomTom to settle), and the larger questions for Linux and the FOSS movement. Regards, Pranesh ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Malini Aisola Date: Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 04:48 Subject: Bruce Perens: Analyzing Microsoft's TomTom Lawsuit http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3807801_1/Bruce-Perens-Analyzing-Microsofts-TomTom-Lawsuit.htm Bruce Perens: Analyzing Microsoft's TomTom Lawsuit By Bruce Perens March 1, 2009 About the Author: Bruce Perens is the creator of the Open Source Definition, the manifesto of Open Source and the criterion for Open Source software licensing. Perens represented Open Source at the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, at the request of the United Nations Development Program. Microsoft has brought a lawsuit against car navigation system manufacturer TomTom. The products in question incorporate Linux, and at least one of the seven patents involved concerns a Linux kernel implementation rather than TomTom's own software. Is this Microsoft's first direct salvo against Linux? There are other striking features of this suit: the technologies claimed in the 8 patents involved are so old and obvious that it's fair to say they have a high "Duh!" factor. There's an anti-trust angle to this suit that could blow up in Microsoft's face. And there's a high probability that some or all of the patents involved are invalid, due to recent court decisions. Is this a serious suit, or an effort to stir up fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux at a critical time, when government and industry is taking up Open Source in a big way? TomTom has shallow pockets, relative to Microsoft, pockets that have already been drained by other lawsuits. Will TomTom have to settle and license regardless of the validity of Microsoft's patent claims, rather than drop $10 or $20 million in defending themselves? Let's take a close look at what's happening. The Lawsuit and Patents Microsoft's complaint mentions 8 patents:      * 5,579,517 Common name space for long and short filenames.      * 5,758,352 Common name space for long and short filenames        (again).      * 6,175,789 Vehicle computer system with open platform        architecture.      * 6,202,008 Vehicle computer system with wireless internet        connectivity      * 6,256,642 Method and system for file system management using a        flash-erasable, programmable, read-only memory.      * 6,704,032 Methods and arrangements for interacting with        controllable objects within a graphical user interface        environment using various input mechanisms.      * 7,054,745 Method and system for generating driving directions.      * 7,117,286 Portable computing device-integrated appliance. You might like to look at these patent filings and form your own opinion. Although their language can be opaque, it doesn't obscure the fact that there isn't much there. A Monopoly on FAT The first two patents are related to the FAT filesystem, which is the way that Microsoft stores files on disk. You might remember its eight-character file-names and three-character extensions, all capital letters, if you remember eight-track tapes and leisure suits. For Windows 95, Microsoft implemented longer filenames that understood the difference between capital and lower-case letters, and that's the topic of these two patents. The "innovation" Microsoft claims is the use of a table to reference the long file names to the short ones, so that software that was written to use short names would still work, sort of. It just got funny mangled 8-character names. Like this:                                     Long Name                                    Short Name                           ALongFilename.txt                              ALONG%#.TXT       Microsoft's Amazing Patented File Name Table Innovation. Now, why would anyone want to pay Microsoft for the right to use this lackluster technology? After all, there were better filesystems before MS-DOS came along, and there are much better ones today. It's not because of the technology, but because of Microsoft's dominance of the computer business. FAT was the filesystem provided by Microsoft systems, and thus it was on nearly all floppy disks. Apple implemented FAT to be compatible with Microsoft. Later on, all USB sticks and SD cards had to use it if they were to work with Windows. So, most removable storage came preformatted with FAT out of the box. Others implemented FAT to be compatible with Microsoft, and it became the de facto "standard" for removable media. But a standard with embedded patents, for which Microsoft is now demanding royalties. So, it's not the technology. Microsoft's market force as an effective monopoly in desktop computing made FAT ubiquitous, and Microsoft is able to muscle other businesses into paying a patent royalty for FAT despite its lack of innovation, only because FAT is what Microsoft chose to put in its own systems. "SD" Stands For "Shooting Downwards" Not satisfied with shooting itself in the foot by getting its users sued just once, the SD Card Association has selected a later version of FAT, not compatible with today's systems, as the default filesystem on the upcoming larger SD cards. This despite the fact that those cards are going to have to run predominantly on embedded devices like TomTom and Amazon's Kindle, which have Linux as their operating system. Wake up, SD Card folks! There are many Open Source filesystem implementations that are superior to the various generations of FAT. Many of them are under licensing that allows proprietary software to incorporate them, and are patent-free, or grant the appropriate patent rights without charge or discrimination. SD Card Consortium shouldn't get away with incorporating a patented Microsoft technology, to the disadvantage of many prospective SD card users, when patent-free and technologically superior solutions are available off-the-shelf. We need an Open Standard, royalty free and without discriminatory licensing, for the next generation of removable media. Whoever develops that standard can save a lot of work by choosing an existing and appropriately licensed Open Source filesystem, and starting from there. Here Come 'da Judge Memo to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly: I'm told you're looking at Microsoft's conduct regarding the settlement in United States v. Microsoft. Please look at how Microsoft is still using its entrenched monopoly status to drive royalties on the technically un-meritorious FAT patents. Also, Your Honor, and anyone else who can do something about this: please consider how the SD Card Association and its ilk continue to drive royalty-bearing software patents of their members into de facto standard products like removable storage media, when there's no good technical reason to do so. A High Duh! Factor Patent 6,175,789 and 6,202,008 might be the ones with the highest Duh! factor in this lawsuit. Filed in 1999, they claim monopoly rights on the "innovation" of a general-purpose computer, in a car, that has an internet connection. That's all. Read the text, I'm not kidding. I really wonder about the patent examiner(s) who thought these were an "invention," and what the patent office was asking of examiners that would lead to the approval of such trivial and obvious patents. Should there be anyone who doubts that such a thing existed previously, consider that radio hams have had it since the '80's. The APRS system included a vehicle computer with a moving map, displaying the location of other, similarly equipped vehicles, starting in 1982 using Navy directional signals before GPS was available to individuals. It was extensively used in the early 1990's, as GPS reached the consumer, and continues to be popular today. Its interstate wireless digital network was going strong by 1984, long before there was an Internet that regular folks could access, and was gatewayed to the Internet as soon as that was possible. This, folks, is what we call prior art in patent terms, and it obviously invalidates patent 6,175,789 and 6,202,008. I'll let you read the other four patents. I think you'll agree that they do not represent significant innovation for the date they are filed. In each case, there was much existing prior art in the field at the time the application was made. Absence of Validity Do other legal issues potentially invalidate the software patents in question? Very likely. The recent court decisions in the Bilski case and KSR v. Teleflex have substantially weakened software patents and overturned the case that made business method patents possible. The Public Patent Foundation (PubPat) had previously convinced the U.S. Patent Office to invalidate one of the FAT patents on prior art grounds, which means they convinced the Patent Office that the same thing had been made previous to Microsoft's patent application and wasn't an invention at all. Microsoft appealed and had the patent reinstated, in a patent-office proceeding where PubPat wasn't given a chance to speak. In the aftermath of that poor process, the judge in Microsoft v. TomTom will have the power to invalidate that patent permanently, based on the same prior-art evidence that PubPat presented. So this case, if allowed to proceed, could be of great advantage to Linux and Open Source by putting the FAT patents to bed permanently. Justice Goes To The Deepest Pocket But will there be a case at all? TomTom's CEO mentioned in a 2008 speech strongly critical of software patenting (video) that in 2005, the company had spent more on patent litigation than all of their other activities combined. According to the patent lawyer's own professional organization, a single software patent infringement case could cost upwards of USD $5 Million to defend. That's what it costs even if you win the case. TomTom must now defend itself from eight patent infringement claims. Smaller companies are often forced to license a patent that is likely to be invalid, rather than pay the terrible expense of proving themselves to be right. This means there is rarely justice for anyone but the very richest companies where software patents are concerned. So, why do we have software patents at all? The general consensus in the industry is that they don't fulfill their constitutional purpose, to encourage innovation, but actually hinder it. They tend to work in favor of a few of the very largest companies, against the small and medium-sized enterprises that make up the vast majority of the tech economy. Thus, they don't make economic sense. Is This The First Shot? (Or Just More FUD?) I asked if this was the first direct shot at Linux from Microsoft. But perhaps their patent agreement with Novell, which appeared calculated to circumvent the terms of the GPL license and raise the cost of Open Source above $0, was the first shot. After the Open Source community made a strong showing against Novell for agreeing to the terms, Microsoft's move was ineffective, and a recent Microsoft agreement with Red Hat included none of the odious terms that Novell took on. Another possibility is that Microsoft knows it can't win this time, but has brought this case to spread anti-Linux FUD in the news at a time when Linux is making critical gains against Microsoft. For example, the United Kingdom government recently announced it will strongly encourage Open Source for its own IT procurement. TomTom is very popular in the UK. This case is already being heavily reported there, and will become a speaking point for those who oppose the government move. What makes me think the case might be a FUD move, rather than something real, is that Microsoft would probably lose if there were a close examination of these patents. So, they can't afford to let the case proceed. I suspect that Microsoft is betting that TomTom will settle, and thus bolster the patents’ weak position publicly through its acquiescence. Another possibility is that Microsoft is willing to trade the PR value of front-page FUD today for a mostly un-noted loss on back pages next year. A Wolf in the Fold Perhaps you've noticed Microsoft's recent efforts to participate in Open Source, and all the noise they've been making about it. This case should be a lesson to the Open Source developers around them: Microsoft still doesn't understand what Open Source is about, or they'd not be suing anyone over the implementation of their ancient filesystem in Linux. They have not turned over a new leaf, and still remain insincere about their involvement in Open Source. The Microsoft employees that Open Source projects directly deal with are as sincere as you'd like, but they aren't top management and can't influence top management. Don't ask them for much in the way of promises, they are liable to be repudiated by those higher up. I doubt many Open Source projects were about to trust Microsoft, but that won't happen now. I don't believe Microsoft was ever attempting to be sincere. A perceived involvement in Open Source by Microsoft, along with highly paid mouthpieces like Novell to chime in for them, is giving Microsoft the ability to speak for Open Source in government circles, short-circuiting the legislation we need to defend ourselves from software patents or to establish a level playing field on which Open Source and proprietary software can compete fairly. That's their true interest. What Should We Do? We've managed to hold enforceable software patenting off, for the most part, in Europe. But we've not had the same success in the U.S. Now, it's time to follow up the Bilski case with legislation cleaning out the software patent system. Developers need to be able to make and sell software without the threat of patent-related extortion. We must unite both proprietary and Open Source developers - who are equally at risk - to work for this cause, if we're to have a hope of being heard by legislators. Bruce Perens is a popular keynote speaker on Linux, Open Source, and technology policy. He is a strategic consultant to government and industry. He can be reached at 510-984-1055, or via email to bruce at perens dot com. -- Malini Aisola Knowledge Ecology International 1621 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500, Washington DC 20009 Tel: +1.202.332.2670 Fax: +1.202.332.2673 -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society T: +91 80 40926283 | W: http://cis-india.org From pranesh at cis-india.org Tue Mar 3 18:12:30 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 18:12:30 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Law will be amended to check video piracy: Karnataka Home Minister Message-ID: <4785f1e20903030442r5944790uf24f3fa8b9380154@mail.gmail.com> >From the Hindu: Date:03/03/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/03/03/stories/2009030353970400.htm Bangalore: The Government will bring in amendments to the law shortly to check video piracy, Minister for Home V.S. Acharya has said. He speaking at the Krutajnata Samarapana (thanks-giving) function organised by the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) on the occasion of the platinum jubilee celebrations of Kannada cinema here on Monday. Dr. Acharya said the Government was aware of the struggle and plight of Kannada cinema, which was facing the challenge of Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi films. Commenting on the declining quality of Kannada films, he said the industry should realise that cultural and literary essence of the land was the root of good cinema. The Government would stand by the industry in all its programmes for the development of Kannada cinema, he said. Secretary, Kannada and Culture, B. R. Jayaramaraje Urs said the Government had been generous in extending sops to the Kannada cinema industry for over four decades. Despite this, the industry had not been responding to the public need on the quality front. As a matter of its responsibility, the industry should find solutions to its problems. President of the Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber K.S. Rama Rao was present. President of KFCC Jaimala presided over the function. From pranesh at cis-india.org Tue Mar 3 18:19:30 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 18:19:30 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Karnataka Bill to curb piracy likely in budget session Message-ID: <4785f1e20903030449i76317a47i37e5f6663f6d8bf8@mail.gmail.com> >From the Hindu. Snippet: The Tamil Nadu Act views that video piracy “... is an act prejudicial to the maintenance of public order.” The then N. Dharam Singh government had stated that the objective of the enactment of a similar Act in Karnataka was to eradicate the video piracy menace and put the film industry on the revival path. It had promised the industry that the existing anti-piracy laws would be brought within the purview of the Goonda Act. But the promise was not fulfilled even by the H.D. Kumaraswamy government. -- This juxtaposes really well with the last article sent to this list, in which B.R. Jayaramaraje Urs (Secretary, Kannada and Culture) blamed the film industry for "not responding to public needs on the quality front", despite receiving enormous sops for "over four decades". Regards, Pranesh Date:19/02/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/02/19/stories/2009021953760400.htm Karnataka - Bangalore Bill to curb film piracy likely in budget session K.N. Venkatasubba Rao Film industry had long been pleading for a tough law Industry is said to have lost Rs. 250 crore in nine years Bangalore: The long-pending Bill to curb piracy of Kannada cinemas and songs is likely to become a reality during the budget session of the State Legislature, according to sources in Kannada cinema industry. Since 2004, the industry had been pleading to the Government to enact a law similar to the one in Tamil Nadu on “exhibition of films on the television network through video cassette recorders and cable television network”. The industry had been losing huge amounts of money in the absence of a stringent law that could contain illegal trade at the cost of producers and distributors. Helplessness The reported attack on some CD and DVD sellers in the city by some producers recently was only an “expression of their helplessness”. The Kannada film industry had incurred a loss of over Rs. 250 crore through video and audio piracy in the last nine years. However, the incident has drawn the Government’s attention towards the issue again, thanks to police intervention, sources said. In 2005, the Dharam Singh Government had promised the industry that it would introduce a Bill at an appropriate time for curbing audio-video piracy. Tamil Nadu Act The then Minister for Information and Publicity, B. Shivaram, had said that the Karnataka Government had been thinking of formulating a Bill on the lines of a legislation, which was an amendment to an earlier Act, introduced by the Tamil Nadu Government. The Tamil Nadu Act views that video piracy “... is an act prejudicial to the maintenance of public order.” The Tamil Nadu Government had brought an amendment to its “Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, and Forest-offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum-grabbers Act 1982” to enable authorities to detain any video pirate under the said Act. Promise not kept The then N. Dharam Singh government had stated that the objective of the enactment of a similar Act in Karnataka was to eradicate the video piracy menace and put the film industry on the revival path. It had promised the industry that the existing anti-piracy laws would be brought within the purview of the Goonda Act. But the promise was not fulfilled even by the H.D. Kumaraswamy government. © Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 From pranesh at cis-india.org Tue Mar 3 19:41:10 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:41:10 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] David Post on The Death of Copyright, Item #241 Message-ID: <49AD3A7E.6050202@cis-india.org> David Post's interesting thoughts in the Volokh Conspiracy: David Post, March 1, 2009 at 9:36am The Death of Copyright, Item #241 There are many reasons why copyright law as we know it is fundamentally ill-suited for the networked age, and why it will (if we are fortunate, and smart) look very, very different 10 or 20 years from now. I've commented on this many times in the past here on the VC (and will keep doing so, unless and until Eugene tells me to shut up). Here's a nice recent illustration of one of copyright's fundamental problems. Over the past few weeks, there has been a proliferation of videos on Youtube made using Microsoft's recently-released "Songsmith" software. Songsmith lets you input music into your computer — by singing and/or playing your guitar into your mic, or feeding in a pre-recorded track — and then the software "analyzes" the music and adds backing tracks matching the "genre" of the music you've fed in. It didn't take long for people to take control of the software's capabilities and to begin feeding in classic songs and re-working them , with sometimes spectacular results: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band I Heard it Through the Grapevine Both authored by 'azz10,' who, by the looks of things, seems to be pretty gifted at this sort of thing. That there is copyright infringement here is almost beyond dispute. Let me put it this way: as a copyright lawyer myself, I would /not/ want to be defending azz10's side in an infringement suit. That, alone, is troubling — copyright is supposed to promote creativity, and here's a veritable explosion of creativity — hundreds of thousands of these videos have been posted to date, some great, some awful, many interesting and expressive — and copyright (and only copyright) is standing squarely in the way. But my point here is different. One of the things that makes copyright so ill-suited to the networked age is that /it doesn't scale/. Here's what I mean. If azz10 walked into my office and said: "I'd like to hire you to clear copyright on this work I have created; find out who I have to pay royalties to, and get me the rights," I would not be able to complete that task (and no copyright lawyer worth his/her salt could complete that task) in less than 4 or 5 hours of work, and possibly a good deal more. Take the "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" video. Some of the questions I will have to answer in order to do this work competently: Who owns the rights to the "audiovisual work" portraying the Marvin Gaye performance? Who owns the rights to the underlying "sound recording"? Who owns the rights to the underlying "musical work" (i.e., the song itself)> (under copyright law, this is a separate copyrighted work, and can be owned separately from either of the foregoing) What /kind/ of royalty do I need to pay, i.e. am I paying a royalty for "reproducing" these works, or for "performing" them? Or "publicly displaying" them? Or "transmitting them by digital audio transmission"? Each of these is plausible, none is certain, and it makes an /enormous/ difference in the amount of the royalty and the identity of the persons to whom the royalty is owed (i.e., if it's a "performance," different copyrights are involved than if it's not). What about Microsoft? Do I owe them a royalty, inasmuch as I've used some of their "genre" tracks in my video? Some of these involve chasing down facts that may be hard to uncover (like who owns the various copyrights). Others involve difficult questions of law. I'll need to examine some documents (copyright assignments, possibly; the language of the Songsmith license, certainly; things like that). I've done this sort of work, for paying clients; it's not impossible, but it does take some time. The point: /it takes orders of magnitude more time to do the copyright clearances than it does to create the work./ Think about it — it could well have taken azz10 15 minutes to synch up these tracks on Songsmith — and easily 10 or 100 times more work would be required to do so in compliance with copyright law. That is an absurd state of affairs. Multiply the waste involved by 100,000 for each of the Songsmith videos posted on Youtube. And then mulitply that by 1,000,000, for each of the Songsmith videos created and /not /posted on Youtube. That's what I mean by a failure to scale. This is, remember, all supposed to be about encouraging creative work. In the old days, with a (much) smaller number of relevant events needing copyright protection, the ratio of creative work to law-compliance work may have been reasonable. But it is reasonable no longer. How we figure out how to change all this is another story. [I try to tell that one in my book ] -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society T: +91 80 40926283 W: http://cis-india.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090303/5e2e03d8/attachment.bin From pranesh at cis-india.org Fri Mar 6 13:06:35 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 13:06:35 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] CIS Lecture Series | Kiran Sahi - The Internet and Illusions of Space and Liberty Message-ID: <4785f1e20903052336m5b0e244eh6cea3f65a2d4935f@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, The Centre for Internet and Society invites you to a talk by Kiran Sahi on 'The Internet and Illusions of Space and Liberty'. Kiran will use this talk as an opportunity to look at the parallels that can be drawn between the spatial elements of the mind, corporal physical space, and the virtual domains of the Internet. Reflecting on the roles of these parallel domains, we can discuss how dissident elements within society, traditionally found in geographical wildernesses, have found new opportunities for freedom in the realms of the Internet. The talk will also explore the idea of the Internet as a heterotopia, a safe space for displaced realities, and the pressures which make it adopt a panoptic structure. Speaker Kiran Sahi is is a designer and educator working from his home in a village north of Bangalore. His work involves presenting and interpreting the changing socio-political geography of his locality for teachers and students visiting from international academic institutions and education authorities. He also advises on local education development projects. Kiran works as a consultant design faculty, teaching materials and sculptural design, and runs a ceramic studio that produces large scale ceramic murals for public spaces. His previous work has involved exploring cultural narratives and their visual representations. He has been interested in exploring the possibilities of a collaborative community based business involving professional designers and local craftsmen. Time and Date Saturday, 7 March, 2009 17:00-18:00 hrs. Venue: Centre for Internet and Society, D2, 3rd Floor, Shariff Chambers, 14 Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560052 (It's in the same building as Wockhardt hospital) Map For a map, please see: http://bit.ly/cis-map You may RSVP at Regards, Pranesh -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090306/68b714d4/attachment-0001.html From the.solipsist at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 13:15:27 2009 From: the.solipsist at gmail.com (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 13:15:27 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] CIS Lecture Series | Kiran Sahi - The Internet and Illusions of Space and Liberty In-Reply-To: <4785f1e20903052336m5b0e244eh6cea3f65a2d4935f@mail.gmail.com> References: <4785f1e20903052336m5b0e244eh6cea3f65a2d4935f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4785f1e20903052345k71005b8eqf8226134b8389e71@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, The Centre for Internet and Society invites you to a talk by Kiran Sahi on 'The Internet and Illusions of Space and Liberty'. Kiran will use this talk as an opportunity to look at the parallels that can be drawn between the spatial elements of the mind, corporal physical space, and the virtual domains of the Internet. Reflecting on the roles of these parallel domains, we can discuss how dissident elements within society, traditionally found in geographical wildernesses, have found new opportunities for freedom in the realms of the Internet. The talk will also explore the idea of the Internet as a heterotopia, a safe space for displaced realities, and the pressures which make it adopt a panoptic structure. Speaker Kiran Sahi is is a designer and educator working from his home in a village north of Bangalore. His work involves presenting and interpreting the changing socio-political geography of his locality for teachers and students visiting from international academic institutions and education authorities. He also advises on local education development projects. Kiran works as a consultant design faculty, teaching materials and sculptural design, and runs a ceramic studio that produces large scale ceramic murals for public spaces. His previous work has involved exploring cultural narratives and their visual representations. He has been interested in exploring the possibilities of a collaborative community based business involving professional designers and local craftsmen. Time and Date Saturday, March 7, 2009 17:00-18:00 hrs. Venue: Centre for Internet and Society, D2, 3rd Floor, Shariff Chambers, 14 Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560052 (It's in the same building as Wockhardt hospital) Map For a map, please see: http://bit.ly/cis-map You may RSVP at Regards, Pranesh -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090306/7af8310b/attachment-0001.html From nicheant at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 11:19:14 2009 From: nicheant at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?TmlzaGFudCB8IOCkqOCkv+CktuCkvuCkgeCkpA==?=) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 11:19:14 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Film piracy funding terror: US thinktank Message-ID: <4439ee330903062149r7a950331o8772477c2537f701@mail.gmail.com> Film piracy funding terror: US thinktank MUMBAI: The leading US thinktank, Rand Corporation, has confirmed what Indian intelligence agencies have been maintaining all along— Dawood Ibrahim has graduated to terrorism and is siphoning off millions of dollars earned from film piracy, drug-running and other crimes to finance his operations. According to sources in the film industry and police, the moment a film is released in Mumbai, the 'D-Company' makes camera prints and sends them to Karachi or Kuala Lumpur where millions of DVDs are made and marketed across the world. But after the Mumbai-based Valuable Group introduced satellite transmission of films directly to cinema halls, it has become difficult for the gang to make camera prints as each cinema hall has a secret identity number encrypted into the movie. To avoid this, gang members have established links with small-time theatres in Gujarat where the camera prints are taken at the first show of any new film. The gang also receives advance prints of the films financed by it through front companies. "Contrary to general impression, the D-Company is still active in Bollywood," a film producer says. "Dawood is India's godfather of godfathers who runs criminal gangs from Bangkok to Dubai. His gang syndicate, called D-Company, engages in strong-arm protection, drug trafficking, extortion and murder-for-hire," the Rand report says. It says that film piracy can be more paying than drug-trafficking. The report says a pirated DVD made in Malaysia for 70 cents is marked up more than 1,000% and sold in London for about $9. "The profit margin is more than three times higher than the mark-up for Iranian heroin and higher than the profit from Columbian cocaine," the report says. Identifying Al-Mansoor and Sadaf brands belonging to Dawood, the report says he has acquired extraordinary market power in the distribution of pirated films throughout the region. The report says the D-Company has got control of Sadaf Trading Company based in Karachi, and thus allowing it to manage distribution network in Pakistan and also acquiring the infrastructure to manufacture pirate VHS tapes and VCDs for sale. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Film-piracy-funding-terror-US-thinktank/articleshow/4237371.cms From nicheant at gmail.com Mon Mar 9 13:09:06 2009 From: nicheant at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?TmlzaGFudCB8IOCkqOCkv+CktuCkvuCkgeCkpA==?=) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 13:09:06 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: Over 225 years of Spanish journalism now on the web In-Reply-To: <4439ee330903090038y5d57f051j92f8c485eaa8bcc7@mail.gmail.com> References: <49B4C02A.9090509@ekgaon.com> <4439ee330903090038y5d57f051j92f8c485eaa8bcc7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4439ee330903090039m43e53484va62f19a80405fd44@mail.gmail.com> Over 225 years of Spanish journalism now on the web By    IANS Monday,09 March 2009, 09:01 hrs Link: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/53307 Madrid: Material from 2,000 newspapers published in Spain and Latin America from 1777 up to 2005, amounting to 4.3 million pages, can now be consulted on the Internet. It is available at the site of the Virtual Press History Library (Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Historica, in Spanish). On the web page prensahistorica.mcu.es the Spanish Culture Ministry has made accessible the entire contents of all the country's public libraries as well as those of other institutions with which it has signed agreements, including city halls and universities, as well as newspapers with whom it has agreed to make public their publishing history. The virtual library's aim is to simultaneously preserve and make accessible library materials that are unique and, thus, otherwise difficult to access. The online library is one of the main digitisation projects to be carried out in Spain. From paivakil at yahoo.co.in Mon Mar 9 21:35:04 2009 From: paivakil at yahoo.co.in (Mahesh T. Pai) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 21:35:04 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Film piracy funding terror: US thinktank In-Reply-To: <4439ee330903062149r7a950331o8772477c2537f701@mail.gmail.com> References: <4439ee330903062149r7a950331o8772477c2537f701@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20090309160504.GA24404@home.wki> Nishant | निशाँत said on Sat, Mar 07, 2009 at 11:19:14AM +0530,: > and marketed across the world. But after the Mumbai-based Valuable > Group introduced satellite transmission of films directly to cinema > halls, it has become difficult for the gang to make camera prints > as each cinema hall has a secret identity number encrypted into the > movie. To avoid this, gang members have established links with > small-time theatres in Gujarat where the camera prints are taken at > the first show of any new film. Question please!!! How does encrypting a code into a particular ``transmission'' make it different from having a "code" incorporated into a specific print?? > The gang also receives advance prints of the films financed by it > through front companies. "Contrary to general impression, the > D-Company is still active in Bollywood," a film producer says. Question please, again!!! Statement 1:- Producer of a film is encouraging and actively facilitating making and selling of unauthorised copies of his own films. Statement 2:- Unauthorised copies of films is eating into profits of film industry. It is just me, or somebody else too notice a contradiction here? No, I am in no way condoning the activities of the D Company. -- Mahesh T. Pai || http://paivakil.blogspot.com A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? From lawrence at altlawforum.org Tue Mar 10 11:03:11 2009 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:03:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Invitation to Talk by Lata Mani on Rethinking Feminist Response to the Mangalore Pub Attack Message-ID: *Towards a New Poetics of Practice: Rethinking Feminist Response to the Mangalore Pub Attack * Lata Mani In this brief note I raise questions that are posed by the nature and form of feminist response to the attack on women in the Amnesia pub in Mangalore and to the spirited defence of Valentine’s Day that followed Sri Ram Sene’s vigilantism. The creative momentum generated by these events suggest that we may be in a moment in which new activist formations can be forged in response to Right Wing lawlessness. However, the exclusive recourse to a liberal discourse of rights and the refusal to engage questions of culture and ethics have restricted the scope of our interventions and left urgent sociocultural and economic tensions unaddressed. If we are to “seize the time” we would need to engage these difficult questions and be willing to set aside various sacred and secular cows in the process. Since the intent is to initiate dialogue, Lata Mani will speak for 15 minutes. Du Saraswathy will respond and the floor will then be opened for discussion. Venue: Alternative Law Forum, No. 122/4 Infantry Road, Bangalore- 560001 Date: Friday the 13th (yes I know :), March 2009 Time : 6 PM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090310/6d2640cd/attachment.html From pranesh at cis-india.org Wed Mar 11 20:48:49 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (pranesh at cis-india.org) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:48:49 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Patently Absurd - 1 | SMS Alerts Message-ID: Visa Sued Over SMS Alerts Service Link: ­Credit card merchant, Visa is being sued by a small US firm for allegedly infringing a patent which covers the use of SMS to alert spenders of transactions. Charge Notification Services Corporation is a relatively young company in Miami, Florida, that offers information processing services to credit card issuing banks. The C.N.S.C. patent covers charge card transaction authorization and/or notification in real-time via SMS to the cardholder's cellular phone. VISA and some of their bank partners have recently been offering this service. "We are very sorry that it had to come to filing this suit," says Ivan Ochoa, the C.E.O. of C.N.S.C. "For months we've tried exhaustively to work with VISA with no results. We're a young company but we have experience with this product and the credit card business as a whole. We have the knowledge and infrastructure to handle even the most extreme transaction volume. We've expended considerable resources on patent registration and product development." While at Russian Standard Bank (RSB), Daniel Davila, COO of C.N.S.C. launched a similar SMS credit card fraud protection service, resulting in an overall significant reduction of fraudulent transactions. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 270 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090311/7674f842/attachment.bin From rai.shailesh at gmail.com Mon Mar 16 12:07:41 2009 From: rai.shailesh at gmail.com (S Rai) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:07:41 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bill Watterson on not licensing Calvin & Hobbes Message-ID: <177e3ed00903152337x2c71d1e4ye26166dfa461c8a@mail.gmail.com> Licensing Calvin & Hobbes By Bill Watterson Comic strips have been licensed from the beginning, but today the merchandising of popular cartoon characters is more profitable than ever. Derivative products - dolls, T-shirts, TV specials, and so on - can turn the right strip into a gold mine. Everyone is looking for the next Snoopy or Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes were imagined to be the perfect candidates. The more I thought about licensing, however, the less I liked it. I spent nearly five years fighting my syndicate's pressure to merchandise my creation. In an age of shameless commercialism, my objections to licensing are not widely shared. Many cartoonists view the comic strip as a commercial product itself, so they regard licensing as a natural extension of their work. As most people ask, what's wrong with the comic strip characters appearing on calendars and coffee mugs? If people want to buy the stuff, why not give it to them? I have several problems with licensing. First of all, I believe licensing usually cheapens the original creation. When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished. Nothing dulls the edge of a new and clever cartoon like saturing the market with it. Second, commercial products rarely respect how a comic strip works. A wordy, multiple-panel strip with extended conversation and developed personalities does not condense to a coffee mug illustration without great violation to the strip's spirit. The subtleties of a multi-dimensional strip are sacrificed for the one-dimensional needs of the product. The world of a comic strip ought to be a special place with its own logic and life. I don't want some animation studio giving Hobbes an actor's voice, and I don't want some greeting card company using Calvin to wish people a happy anniversary, and I don't want the issue of Hobbes's reality settled by a doll manufacturer. When everything fun and magical is turned into something for sale, the strip's world is diminished. 'Calvin and Hobbes' was designed to be a comic strip and that's all I want it to be. It's the one place where everything works the way I intend it to. Third, as a practical matter, licensing requires a staff of assistants to do the work. The cartoonist must become a factory foreman, delegating responsibilities and overseeing the production of things he does not create. Some cartoonists don't mind this, but I went into cartooning to draw cartoons, not to run a corporate empire. I take great pride in the fact that I write every word, draw every line, color every Sunday strip, and paint every book illustration myself. My strip is a low-tech, one-man operation, and I like it that way. I believe it's the only way to preserve the craft and to keep the strip personal. Despite what some cartoonists say, approving someone else's work is not the same as doing it yourself. Beyond all this, however, lies a deeper issue: the corruption of a strip's integrity. All strips are supposed to be entertaining, but some strips have a point of view and a serious purpose behind the jokes. When the cartoonist is trying to talk honestly and seriously about life, then I believe he has a responsibility to think beyond satisfying the market's every whim and desire. Cartoonists who think they can be taken seriously as artists while using the strip's protagonists to sell boxer shorts are deluding themselves. The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize or will admit. Believable characters are hard to develop and easy to destroy. When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his voice is co-opted by the business concerns of toy makers, television producers, and advertisers. The cartoonist's job is no longer to be an original thinker; his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become "celebrities", endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance. My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs? Who would trust the honesty of the strip's observations when the characters are hired out as advertising hucksters? If I were to undermine my own characters like this, I would have taken the rare privilege of being paid to express my own ideas and given it up to be an ordinary salesman and a hired illustrator. I would have sold out my own creation. I have no use for that kind of cartooning. Unfortunately, the more popular 'Calvin and Hobbes' became, the less control I had over its fate. I was presented with licensing possibilities before the strip was even a year old, and the pressure to capitalize on its success mounted from then on. Succeeding beyond anyone's wildest expectations had only inspired wilder expectations. To put the problem simply, trainloads of money were at stake - millions and millions of dollars could be made with a few signatures. Syndicates are businesses, and no business passes up that kind of opportunity without an argument. Undermining my position, I had signed a contract giving my syndicate all exploitation rights to 'Calvin and Hobbes' into the next century. Because it is virtually impossible to get into daily newspapers without a syndicate, it is standard practice for syndicates to use their superior bargaining position to demand rights they neither need nor deserve when contracting with unknown cartoonists. The cartoonist has few alternatives to the syndicate's terms: he can take his work elsewhere on the unlikely chance that a different syndicate would be more inclined to offer concessions, he can self-syndicate and attempt to attract the interest of newspapers without the benefit of reputation or contacts, or he can go back home and find some other job. Universal would not sell my strip to newspapers unless I gave the syndicate the right to merchandise the strip in other media. At the time, I had not thought much about licensing and the issue was not among my top concerns. Two syndicates had already rejected 'Calvin and Hobbes', and I worried more about the contractual consequences if the strip failed than the contractual consequences if the strip succeeded. Eager for the opportunity to publish my work, I signed the contract, and it was not until later, when the pressure to commercialize focused my opinions on the matter, that I understood the trouble I'd gotten myself into. I had no legal recourse to stop the sundicate from licensing. The syndicate preferred to have my cooperation, but my approval was by no means necessary. Our arguments with each other grew more bitter as the stakes got higher, and we had an ugly relationship for several years. The debate had its ridiculous aspects. I am probably the only cartoonist who resented the popularity of his own strip. Most cartoonists are more than eager for the exposure, wealth, and prestige that licensing offers. When cartoonists fight their syndicates, it's usually to make more money, not less. And making the whole issue even more absurd, when I didn't license, bootleg 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise sprung up to feed the demand. Mall stores openly sold T-shirts with drawings illegally lifted from my books, and obscene or drug-related shirts were rife on college campuses. Only thieves and vandals have made money on 'Calvin and Hobbes' merchandise. For years, Universal pressured me to compromise on a "limited" licensing program. The syndicate would agree to rule out the most offensive products if I would agree to go along with the rest. This would be, in essence, my only shot at controlling what happened to my work. The idea of bartering principles was offensive to me and I refused to compromise. For that matter, the syndicate and I had nothing to trade anyway: It didn't care about my notions of artistic integrity. With neither of us valuing what the other had to offer, compromise was impossible. One of us was going to trample the interests of the other. By the strip's fifth year, the debate had gone as far as it could possibly go, and I prepared to quit. If I could not control what 'Calvin and Hobbes' stood for, the strip was worthless to me. My contract was so one-sided that quitting would have allowed Universal to replace me with hired writers and artists and license my creation anyway, but at this point, the syndicate agreed to renegotiate my contract. The exploitation rights to the strip were returned to me, and I will not license 'Calvin and Hobbes'. - http://cabcalvinandhobbes.tripod.com/ch_licensing.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090316/3f67b754/attachment-0001.html From pranesh at cis-india.org Mon Mar 16 12:51:59 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (pranesh at cis-india.org) Date: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:51:59 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] GI for Tirupati laddus In-Reply-To: <00a001c9a5f6$c4ccbe20$bd01a8c0@laptop> Message-ID: Lost in the legalese is the question of why the prasadam of Lord Venkateshwara requires any sort of GI protection. Date:16/03/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/03/16/stories/2009031657492000.htm Tirupati laddu likely to get IPR soon New Delhi: The Tirupati laddu, famous for its size, may soon get intellectual property rights (IPR) as the managing trust of the temple is seeking geographical exclusivity for the delicacy. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), a trust which manages the world’s richest temple — Tirumala Venkateswara Temple — at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh, has submitted an application before the Geographical Indication Registry seeking the GI tag. “We have received the application regarding the Geographical Indication tag for Tirupati laddus,” Controller-General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks P.H. Kurian said. The Tirupati laddu, made at Tirumala, is intensely sweet and made of tiny syrup-soaked balls called boondi. This is sold as ‘Prasadam’ of Lord Venkateshwara. Without giving details about the application and the basis on which this tag is being sought, Mr. Kurian said, “The trust has applied for the GI tag before the Geographical Indication Registry office in Chennai.” Under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, the GI office functions under the Controller-General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks. After several attempts to seek official comments from the TTD board, its Executive Officer & Member-Secretary K.V. Ramanachary said, “We are not able to give details, ask GI officials in this regard.” However, the Chennai-based Geographical Indication Registry Office didn’t disclose any details about the application, either. Under legal protection, the GI tag facilitates action in the case of any violation of its exclusive rights. The GI tag aims at promoting the economic prosperity of producers of goods in a geographical area. Usually, the tag is granted to goods that essentially originate and are produced in a defined geographical locality and region. Geographical indications are covered as part of intellectual property rights. The GI tag has been awarded to a number of products or goods, including the famous Darjeeling Tea, Madhubani Paintings, Kashmiri Sozani Craft and Thanjavur Paintings. — PTI © Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 270 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090316/d4ea1f67/attachment.bin From pranesh at cis-india.org Tue Mar 17 18:25:26 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:25:26 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] DMCA used to curb competition (surprise, surprise) Message-ID: <49BF9DBE.5070402@cis-india.org> With this, Amazon joins the ranks of garage door opener manufacturers (Chamberlain), printer companies (Lexmark), portable music player producers (Apple, with its FairPlay DRM system). As Richard Esguerre of EFF put it, DRMs are all about "eliminating legitimate competition, hobbling interoperability, and creating de facto technology monopolies". That apart, MobileRead seems to be the e-book equivalent of Doom9 and HydrogenAudio. Regards, Pranesh From: See also: +-------+ March 13, 2009 8:00 PM PDT Amazon invokes DMCA against Kindle e-books from other vendors by Declan McCullagh MobileRead.com posted a letter this week that Amazon.com apparently sent regarding alleged copyright violations. This is an excerpt. When President Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law 11 years ago, he predicted it will "protect from digital piracy the copyright industries that comprise the leading export of the United States." The DMCA turned out to be much broader than that. This week, an e-book Web site said Amazon.com invoked the 1998 law to prevent books from some non-Amazon sources from working on its Kindle reader . Amazon sent a legal notice to MobileRead.com complaining that information relating to a computer utility written in the Python programming language "constitutes a violation" of the DMCA, according to a copy of the warning letter that the site posted. MobileRead.com is an e-book news and community site. MobileRead.com forum moderator Alexander Turcic said in a post on Thursday that although he did not believe the program violated the law, the site would "voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it." Turcic said that, contrary to Amazon's claim, his site never "hosted" the software. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. The author of the software in question, titled Kindlepid.py, is listed as Igor Skochinsky, a hardware hacker who performed a remarkable analysis of the Kindle and described in December 2007 how he was able to gain access to the device. It's unclear why Amazon waited so long to respond with a legal threat, and why the company targeted MobileRead.com: Skochinsky's original blog post about Kindlepid.py is dated December 2007, and the copy of the Kindlepid.py software hosted at the Googlepages.com Web-page posting site is still available for download at http://skochinsky.googlepages.com/azw-0.2.zip. Kindlepid.py and a related piece of accompanying Python code don't allow piracy. Rather, they accomplish something akin to the opposite: they allow legally purchased books from other e-book stores to be used on the Kindle. (Amazon owns MobiPocket, one of those stores. Another would be OverDrive.com , which counts schools and libraries as customers.) In theory, at least, this could threaten Amazon's business model, which provides wireless connectivity through Sprint's EV-DO cellular data network and covers the cost through items purchased from the Amazon Kindle Store . Kindle customers can also e-mail themselves documents to be converted at 10 cents per conversion . A copy of a MobileRead.com wiki page --now empty--saved in Google's cache says Kindlepid.py allows you to "obtain books from sites that use DRM (Digital Rights Management - encryption) on their books for specific devices. This includes book sellers and public libraries." It provides instructions on how to install and use the software. MobileRead.com readers with Kindles were not pleased with Amazon. "What this script does is make the Kindle more useful," wrote one reader. "With Amazon using the DMCA to get rid of this, they are alienating their customers and causing prospective customers to purchase a different device." And the Kindlefix.py code is already being mirrored, including in a post on Slashdot.org. Section 1201 of the DMCA says: "No person shall... offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology... is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." One exception to the DMCA's general rule, however, comes a few paragraphs later. It says circumvention is permissible for "interoperability" of computer programs, with interoperability defined as the "ability of computer programs to exchange information, and of such programs mutually to use the information which has been exchanged." If Amazon were to press its case against Kindlefix.py, another legal claim could involve reverse engineering, which is prohibited by the Kindle terms of use . They say users may not "circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Device or Software or any mechanisms operatively linked to the Software, including, but not limited to, augmenting or substituting any digital rights management functionality of the Device or Software." This isn't the only legal spat that's arisen over the Kindle 2. Last month, the Authors Guild claimed that the mechanical text-to-speech converter was a violation of copyright law. -- Pranesh Prakash Programme Manager Centre for Internet and Society T: +91 80 40926283 W: http://cis-india.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090317/3e4c453b/attachment.bin From leena.prasad at crymail.org Fri Mar 20 14:17:42 2009 From: leena.prasad at crymail.org (Leena Prasad) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:17:42 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] GI for Tirupati laddus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <124CDD6AE49FA54A9C604769B4CD312B89D18FC9@cryexchange.crymail.org> Please sign this online petition created by CRY Volunteers --- also circulate amonsgt friends and networks, if you can. http://www.petitiononline.com/mn12345/petition.html -----Original Message----- From: commons-law-bounces at sarai.net [mailto:commons-law-bounces at sarai.net] On Behalf Of pranesh at cis-india.org Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 12:52 To: NLS IP; Commons Law Subject: [Commons-Law] GI for Tirupati laddus Lost in the legalese is the question of why the prasadam of Lord Venkateshwara requires any sort of GI protection. Date:16/03/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/03/16/stories/2009031657492000.htm Tirupati laddu likely to get IPR soon New Delhi: The Tirupati laddu, famous for its size, may soon get intellectual property rights (IPR) as the managing trust of the temple is seeking geographical exclusivity for the delicacy. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), a trust which manages the world's richest temple - Tirumala Venkateswara Temple - at Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh, has submitted an application before the Geographical Indication Registry seeking the GI tag. "We have received the application regarding the Geographical Indication tag for Tirupati laddus," Controller-General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks P.H. Kurian said. The Tirupati laddu, made at Tirumala, is intensely sweet and made of tiny syrup-soaked balls called boondi. This is sold as 'Prasadam' of Lord Venkateshwara. Without giving details about the application and the basis on which this tag is being sought, Mr. Kurian said, "The trust has applied for the GI tag before the Geographical Indication Registry office in Chennai." Under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999, the GI office functions under the Controller-General of Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks. After several attempts to seek official comments from the TTD board, its Executive Officer & Member-Secretary K.V. Ramanachary said, "We are not able to give details, ask GI officials in this regard." However, the Chennai-based Geographical Indication Registry Office didn't disclose any details about the application, either. Under legal protection, the GI tag facilitates action in the case of any violation of its exclusive rights. The GI tag aims at promoting the economic prosperity of producers of goods in a geographical area. Usually, the tag is granted to goods that essentially originate and are produced in a defined geographical locality and region. Geographical indications are covered as part of intellectual property rights. The GI tag has been awarded to a number of products or goods, including the famous Darjeeling Tea, Madhubani Paintings, Kashmiri Sozani Craft and Thanjavur Paintings. - PTI (c) Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu From mail at responsenet.co.in Sun Mar 22 23:57:56 2009 From: mail at responsenet.co.in (DevAlt) Date: Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:57:56 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Participatory Planning and Decision Making using GIS - Geographical Information System Message-ID: <97a0f9d8c9fd6919174810150017eaad@responsenet.co.in> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090322/fabf767c/attachment-0001.html From patrice at xs4all.nl Mon Mar 23 21:01:01 2009 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:31:01 +0100 (CET) Subject: [Commons-Law] *MEPs back off from copyright term extension vote!* Message-ID: <58475.59.96.45.125.1237822261.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Forwarded from rekombinant & INURA lists: Dear Sound Copyright petitioner, Amid intense lobbying in the European Parliament next Monday's vote on the proposal to extend the term of copyright has been struck off in a shock move. Following a meeting of the presidents of the political groups in the European Parliament on Tuesday, and with controversy and a lack of consensus surrounding the proposal, MEPs have delayed voting till the end of April - just before this summer's European elections. A trialogue discussion between the European Commission, Council and Parliament, set for the end of March, will now attempt to broker a deal to see if the directive will be allowed to pass. MEPs are waking up to the reality that the proposal to extend copyright term doesn't do what it says. It's a terrible and unworkable instrument that will do nothing but bring copyright into disrepute in the eyes of consumers. If you're concerned about the need for a fair and balanced copyright framework you must contact your MEPs now (1). Make your voice heard! In other news this week Professor Martin Kretschmer, Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management Bournmemouth, and Horace Trubridge, Assistant General Secretary of the British Musicians' Union, have been debating the copyright term extension proposal (2). Additionally copyright creators in the Association for Fair Audiovisual Copyright in Europe have launched a petition against the proposal (3). But right now the most important thing is to contact your MEPs (4) and tell them why copyright term extension is a bad idea (5)! Use our web banners (6) and spread the word. Yours, the Sound Copyright Team (1) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/public.do?language=en (2) http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/shane_richmond/blog/2009/03/16/ copyright_extension_debate_we_must_not_inhibit_digital_creators _ (3) http://aface.eu/ (4) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/members/public.do?language=en (5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kijON_XODUk (6) http://www.soundcopyright.eu/badges === The Sound Copyright privacy policy is linked from http:// www.soundcopyright.eu/about From pranesh at cis-india.org Tue Mar 24 20:15:30 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:15:30 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Lectures at the Centre for Internet and Society (March 27 & 28) Message-ID: <4785f1e20903240745m162496b6ve18e2108b2af5897@mail.gmail.com> The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, invites you to two lectures this weekend. On Friday, 27 March, Patrice Riemens will speak on 'The Dark Face of Google', and on Saturday, 28 March, Emma Ota will speak on 'Technology and the Mediation of Place'. 'The Dark Face of Google' ========================== * Talk by Patrice Riemens * Date and Time 27 March 2009; 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm The extraordinary rise of Google Inc. from a 'confidential' search site in the late nineties, the heydays of Altavista, to its present preminent status on the internet, has attracted a lot of attention. The admirers see Google as the incarnation of things to come, not only in information retrieval & management, and not even on the Internet only, but in the economy and society as a whole. The nay-sayers variously view Google as a flattening behemoth of digital information, or as a cultural war machine, bent on the Americanisation of the planet, and generally as a mendacious commercial monopoly pretending to 'do no evil' while hypocritically promoting open source, access, and life in general. Outside this discussion stand an ever growing mass of millions of users who ask no questions, profess neither admiration or hatred (and if so, rather the former), but are happy to use the search engine and the many other services provided by Google. That they hereby gladly if unwittingly contribute to reinforcing the assets of Google, in the words of Yann Moulier Boutang, "the only company in the world that is able to make 14 million people work for it at any given moment, for free", is one of the many starkly under-lighted aspects of this Internet giant's operative mode. 'The Dark Face of Google' is the title of the book written two years ago by the Italian Ippolita Collective, which Patrice Riemens is currently translating. Ippolita's brief is neither eulogizing nor demonising Google, but to understand it, especially in its less advertised aspects. Their aim is to educate Google's users, not to wean them away from it, and to politicise the discussion about search, digital services, and the management of information and knowledge in general. Patrice Riemens will discuss a few points in this context. * The ways in which Google determines, undermines, or enforces existing power and knowledge structures * The Google Books Project and how it reinforces IPR tyranny * Google's local policies and how they affect fundamental civil liberties This talk, like Ippolita's book, is intended as a general, informed introduction to an issue that has been insufficiently discussed, due to media hype, and the apparent innocuousness of a readily available, extremely fast and effective, free, Internet service. * Speaker Patrice Riemens is a social geographer by education and a private intellectual and internet activist by choice. He is a promoter of Open Knowledge and Free Software, and has been involved as a "FLOSSopher" (a 'philosopher' of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software movements) at the Asia Source and Africa Source camps, held to promote FLOSS among non-governmental organisations. He is a member of the Dutch hackers' group Hippies from Hell. He has formerly worked with De Waag Center for Old and New Media, an institute housed in an old castle in Amsterdam, on the cutting edge of technology, culture, education and industry. Patrice has also been on the staff of Multitudes, a French philosophical, political and artistic monthly journal founded in 2000 by Yann Moulier-Boutang. ----- Technology and the Mediation of Place ====================================== * Talk by Emma Ota * Date and Time 28 March 2009; 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm When mediated space surrounds us and our sense of place is increasingly constructed through technology, how do we locate ourselves? Challenging notions of location and locality, Emma Ota will present an overview of two years of research into the mediation of place through technology and the developments of media art in Asia. We carry many locations with us, virtual, physical, psychological and cultural locations which have a complex relation to each other; this presentation will consider the impact of new media upon the construction of these locations and how they interact with each other, as these technologies increasingly become part of the reality of our located experience, no longer separate apparatus, not merely a portal to elsewhere but part of our encounter of place. When identity, community and culture are formulated upon mediated experiences we are led back to Benjamin’s discussion of the loss of aura, debating what meaning can still lie in the original; yet, arguably, such an original state has never existed, all phenomena encountered and assimilated through one form of mediation or another. But to be mediated is to transform and, as Heidegger has demonstrated, technology presents an enframing of its content, which may lead to new revealings but also a loss of that which lies beyond the frame. We have perhaps reached a stage where we can no longer comment upon mediated localities, but must turn to the localities of mediation. These are just some of the critical debates which Ota has been investigating in her research. While pursuing theoretical research into this topic, Ota has also followed studies in Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia in an examination of new media art provision and development in East/South East Asia. Interviewing artists, curators, theorists etc. over the course of a year, a large body of documentation has been accumulated which will be presented as a small glimpse into the new media condition of the region. * Speaker Emma Ota is a curator and researcher based in Tokyo, the Director of Dislocate, Project for Art, Technology and Locality, and a Researcher at Musashino Art University, Department of Visual Imaging and Sciences. Her practices focus upon media arts and international exchange. She has worked for the media arts organization Trampoline, based in Germany and the UK and co-curated the Radiator Festival for Art and Technology in 2005. She initiated the project Traversing Territories, fostering collaboration between students and young artists in Japan and the UK (which has since continued annually). In 2006 she established the project Dislocate for art, technology and locality which brings together international artists and experts in the discussion and debate of the role of new media in relation to our surrounding environment. Ota is guest curator at Ginza Art Lab, an independent artist run space and was also co-curator of Space Rabi Adesso, Koenji in 2008. Ota is highly concerned with promoting international cross-cultural communication between children and is co-founder of Inter-play, an organization which runs collaborative workshops and projects between children in Japan and other countries around the world. Other projects have included ‘The Moon’, a groundbreaking contemporary art exhibition of Japanese and UK artists held in the historic gardens of Kodaiji Temple, Kyoto, and ‘A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling’, an artist in residency exchange project with participant artists Erika Tan (UK) and Mio Shirai (Japan). As a researcher Ota is investigating the development of media arts in Asia and its relation to specific social and cultural contexts, in particular ideas of place, these investigations have led her to China, Korea, India, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. For more information please see www.dis-locate.net and www.eonsbetween.net. ========================================================================= * Venue Centre for Internet and Society, No. D2, 3rd Floor, Shariff Chambers (Wockhardt hospital building) 14 Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560052 * Map For a map, please see: http://bit.ly/cis-map. * Contact Pranesh Prakash (pranesh at cis-india.org / +91 80 40926283) From dak at sarai.net Fri Mar 27 15:23:26 2009 From: dak at sarai.net (The Sarai Programme) Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:23:26 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Short-term research positions: Asian cultural studies Message-ID: <49CCA216.9050409@sarai.net> *Short-Term Research Positions: Asian Cultural Studies* The Cultural and Material life of media piracy is a three-year project carried out by the Sarai programme of the CSDS, Delhi, India in collaboration with the Alternative Law Forum Bangalore, India. The project seeks open a different debates on piracy other than simply that of enforcement and criminality in Asia. We hope to generate discussions of cultural needs, community practices of sharing and circulation in societies of high inequality. We will also look at media industry approaches to piracy and enforcement strategies. In addition, there will be ethnographic and quantitative work on media use in neighborhoods. The main research node spans South Asia, with comparative work in China and South East Asia. The Sarai-ALF teams of researchers work in tandem with an international project on media piracy with fellow researchers in Brazil, South Africa and Russia coordinated by the SSRC (New York). The project is supported by the IDRC (Canada) We are looking for bright, energetic and qualified researchers who can work in collaboration with a regional and international team. Applicants must demonstrate abilities to research and write on the subject. A familiarity with the debate on piracy, intellectual Property and the creative commons is preferable. Social science and humanities applicants should have completed postgraduate degrees, law students a four-year programme. The position is ideal for researchers working on their Ph.d/M.Phil, wanting to combine it with ongoing research and interest in media, law and cultural studies. Independent researchers with a clear, demonstrable research capacity and experience may also apply. *Researcher One: Beijing* The researcher will be media and copy culture circuits in China post video/VCD and the relationship to the international legal regime. Research will be fieldwork based. Researchers must be bi-lingual in Mandarin and English. *Researcher Two: Hong Kong* The researcher will be looking at Hong Kong Media industries after video and the worlds of piracy in South China. Researchers should be fluent and bi-lingual in Cantonese and English. Remuneration will be approximately *USD 5000 for a six-month period.* A publication quality research paper is expected at the conclusion of the research period. Interested applicants may send their CV and a written research sample to *researchjobs at sarai.net* by *April 20th, 2009*. *Applications without a written research sample will not be entertained*. * Links* Sarai, CSDS: *www.sarai.net* Alternative Law Forum: *www.altlawforum.org* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090327/a9cfd195/attachment.html From pranesh at cis-india.org Mon Mar 30 10:30:39 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:30:39 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] EU Parliament approves anti-graduated response report Message-ID: <4785f1e20903292200u44e29fb4v9e79a000c2d272af@mail.gmail.com> The report pits privacy against copyright infringement, and seems to hold that privacy will win. The report is available at: http://bit.ly/eu-mar-26 ------ http://torrentfreak.com/eu-rejects-3-strikes-for-file-sharers-090327/ EU Rejects ‘3 Strikes’ for File-Sharers Written by enigmax on March 27, 2009 The European Parliament has approved a report which goes against the French plan to implement a ‘3 strikes’ regime for alleged P2P copyright infringers. The proposals to increase security and ensure freedom on the Internet were accepted, but disconnecting users from the Internet was ruled out. For the third time in a year the European Parliament has spoken out against tougher anti-piracy legislation that would allow alleged file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet based on evidence from anti-piracy lobby groups. Instead, they chose to protect rights and freedoms of Internet users. The report from Greek MEP Stavros Lambrinidis concerning security and the protection of fundamental freedoms on the Internet, has been accepted by an overwhelming majority. The European Parliament adopted the report with 481 votes in favor, 25 against and 21 abstentions. French proposals that would allow a ‘graduated response’ aka ‘3 strikes’ regime to deal with alleged copyright infringers were rejected. “While ensuring that the Internet is more secure is a legitimate goal for our societies, we must monitor and restrict the use of surveillance and control techniques that threaten our freedoms, especially in cases which question its necessity, proportionality and effectiveness,” says the report. In a clear snub to both the French government and copyright holders the report says, “Governments or private companies should not see the denial of such access as a means of imposing sanctions, as proposed in some countries in the union.” The report further states that computer and electronic literacy is the new literacy of the 21st century and that guaranteeing Internet access to all European citizens is synonymous with guaranteeing education. The French tried to protect their upcoming 3 Strikes law, but failed. An amendment proposed to read, “Access to the Internet should not be the subject of abuse for purposes of illegal activities and that a balance between the various basic rights guaranteed in Community legislation must be respected,” was rejected. At this stage it is unclear if this pressure from the European Parliament will cause the French to reconsider their ‘3 strikes’ plans. It would not be the first time Sarkozy has chosen to ignore the democratic vote. From pranesh at cis-india.org Mon Mar 30 15:15:31 2009 From: pranesh at cis-india.org (pranesh at cis-india.org) Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:15:31 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Feroz Ali Khader | Does patenting research change the culture of science? Message-ID: Dear All, Here's an interesting article by Feroz Ali Khader on the PUPFIP Bill, Bayh-Dole, and the culture of scientific research. He points out that it is difficult for the research-exception to exist side by side with commercialisation of research by universities. --------- Does patenting research change the culture of science? Mar 12th, 2009 Feroz Ali Khader Dr. Georges Kohler, Nobel laureate and co-inventor of the hybridoma technique, did not care much about patents. As a result, the hybridoma technique — a technique for developing monoclonal antibodies of exceptional purity and specificity that are able to recognise and bind a specific antigen — remained in the public domain. This paved the road for using it in numerous diagnostic tools to test for cancer and AIDS. Unlike the hybridoma technique, the native and recombinant forms of Taq DNA polymerase (Taq), an important tool used commonly in DNA sequencing, is protected by patents held by Hoffman-La Roche. In 1995, the Taq patents became the cause for a legal action against more than 40 U.S. universities and research institutes and hundreds of individual scientists. Roche’s cause of grievance pertained to the purchase of Taq by scientists for use from an unauthorised source. Biomedical research in the U.S. underwent a major change in 1980. The U.S. Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act which encouraged universities and other institutions to patent discoveries arising from federally supported research and permitted the transfer of these technologies to the private sector. Patent filings increased manifold. But the new law also changed the culture of science. Before the Act was passed, much of biomedical research followed a shared approach. Researchers were free to use research results as they were all in the public domain. Federal funded research discoveries remained unpatented and formed the foundation for many applied (downstream) research. Drug companies used them for developing cures. The Act, however, changed it. Results were kept secretive. The Bayh-Dole Act encouraged private participation in basic research, allowed the patenting of basic research, and permitted licensing of the research to private hands for exclusive commercialisation. Even after nearly three decades of its existence, the effect of the Bayh-Dole Act remains controversial. The Indian Government is presently deliberating on a new IP bill in the lines of the US Bayh-Dole Act. The Bill titled ‘The Protection and Utilisation of Public Funded Intellectual Property Bill, 2008’ has already seen its share of brickbats for blindly emulating the Bayh-Dole Act when the conditions of basic research in India do not warrant such imitation and that too without some of the measures for protecting public interest contained in the US Act. The Bill would certainly qualify for an untimely piece of legislation though proposed with the laudable objective of allowing universities to patent and commercialise public funded research. One significant impact of the Bill is strangely not be seen or noticed within the provisions of the Bill. If the Bill is enacted it would severely undermine the ‘experimental use’ exception which grants immunity to universities and research institutions which are involved in research from patent infringement actions. Section 47(3) of the Patents Act, 1970 provides exemption from infringement liability when the use of a patented invention is for research or experimental use which includes imparting instructions to pupils. The US patent law also acknowledges the ‘experimental use’ exception but the new role of universities as profit-making organisation introduced by the Bayh-Dole Act has significantly weakened the immunity enjoyed by universities. Since the Bayh-Dole Act came into force the number of US universities involved in patent infringement suits rose drastically. Many universities, such as University of California, University of Minnesota, Emory University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Cornell University, and MIT have been parties to infringement suits. In Madey v Duke University (2002), the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected the ‘experimental use’ defence taken by Duke University. It narrowed the research defence to exclude any unauthorised use of intellectual property in the course of university research, particularly when university research and development efforts were targeted at the commercialisation of new biomedical research tools. The Court held that experimental use defence will apply only if the use of the patented invention is solely for amusement, to satisfy idle curiosity, or for strictly philosophical inquiry. The Court refused to entertain the defence if the use was in furtherance of the alleged infringer’s legitimate business. Many legal experts are of the view that narrowing down the experimental use exception to mean research for ‘amusement’ and ‘philosophical inquiry’ will deter scientific discovery. Scientists and researchers who use patented research tools without authorisation will now do so at the risk of being made parties to future litigation. And clearing the way will involve licensing patented research tools which will further add to the transaction cost of conducting research. Commercial exploitation and ‘experimental use’ immunity do not go together. Universities and research institutes will have to choose between the two. By allowing universities to patent and commercialise their research, the proposed Bill will expose the universities to the rigmarole of patent litigation, either to enforce their patents or to defend themselves against charges of infringement. Universities will pay a heavy price the day they are prevented from pursuing a line of research for the fear of infringing patents. Developing economies cannot afford to give up or even dilute the ‘experimental use’ exception enjoyed by its universities. Ideally, the move to commercialise university research must have come after removing all the barriers that hinder research and restrict its produce. Till such time, the temptation of putting the horse before the cart must be resisted. (Feroz Ali Khader is an advocate and the author of the book ‘The Touchstone Effect: The Impact of Pre-grant Opposition on Patents.’) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 270 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20090330/d877832e/attachment-0001.bin