A New Animated Web Series About Copying And Copyright

from the check-it-out dept

A group of filmmakers has decided to put together an interesting new animated web series called "Copy-Me" all about copying and copyright -- and more specifically about culture and sharing, and why that's important (while also debunking some of the usual myths about copyright). Among the things they've claimed the series will cover are:

• The importance of the public domain.
• Artists making money without restricting access to their work.
• A bit of copyright history.
• The paradox of originality.
• The state of the Internet today
• The impact of copyright on every single part of society today.

While they're just getting started, it looks like it will be quite interesting. They've also put together an IndieGogo campaign for folks interested in supporting this project. Here's the intro video the filmmakers have made about the campaign, explaining a bit more of why they're doing this and what they hope to accomplish: While there have been various other cool projects trying to discuss these issues, from Kirby Ferguson's Everything is a Remix to Nina Paley's Copying is Not Theft, the more the merrier in getting past the myths of copyright that a certain industry has been pushing for decades.

Filed Under: copy me, copying, copyright, creative commons, culture, sharing, web series

Sony And YouTube Take Down Sintel; Blender's Open Source, Creative Commons, Crowdfunded Masterpiece

from the how-to-mess-up-everything dept

Pretty much everyone has been sending over the bizarre story of YouTube taking down the film Sintel based on a copyright claim from Sony Pictures. While I imagine it will be back up soon (if not already by the time you read this), as I write this the Sintel link shows the following (and between writing this and posting it, the video was put back up, but all weekend it looked like this): If you're unfamiliar with Sintel, we wrote about it back in 2010. It's an amazingly well-done short animated film created via the open source software Blender, in part to promote how amazing Blender's 3D content creation suite is. The video was partly crowdfunded and was released under a wonderfully broad Creative Commons license that even allowed commercial use (it only required attribution). Sony had nothing to do with any of this.

The Slashdot post about this explains what probably happened here. Sony recently added Sintel to its official 4k demo pool to show off its 4k "ultra HD" TVs. Who knows if they worked out a specific licensed to use it, but under the Creative Commons license, the company wouldn't need to, so long as Sony properly attributed the clip. But, the thinking appears to be that once in the demo pool, the film was somehow added to Sony's "contentID" list of works that Sony claims copyright on, leading YouTube's automated system to pull down the original as infringement. As others have pointed out this highlights almost every possible thing that pisses off people about copyright and automated takedown systems like ContentID.

It's a big company -- one who has fought against the idea that "amateurs" could do powerful work -- taking down a work that it has no copyright claim over. And the work it took down is a well-known example of a freely distributable, Creative Commons-licensed work, created via open source software, and partially crowdfunded. It's hard to think of any other takedown situation that would be more ridiculous or better highlight how broken an automated copyright takedown system is.

Over the last few weeks, in various hearings and conferences, the legacy entertainment industry (and its supporting politicians) have made it pretty clear that they're going to push for automated systems like ContentID to be mandatory in the future. The Sintel takedown by Sony should be the perfect case study in why that's a huge problem.

Filed Under: censorship, content id, copyright, creative commons, crowdfunded, open source
Companies: blender, google, sony, youtube

German Court Says Creative Commons 'Non-Commercial' Licenses Must Be Purely For Personal Use

from the YMMV dept

Creative Commons licenses have been hugely successful in allowing people to share their creations in ways otherwise impossible using traditional copyright monopolies. But one problem remains unresolved: what exactly does the "non-commercial" license allow you to do? This lack of clarity has led various people to advocate avoiding the use of CC-NC. Back in 2012, Techdirt reported on a call to drop completely both the non-commercial and the no-derivatives licenses. In the same year, a group of German copyright experts released in collaboration with Wikimedia a document entitled "Consequences, Risks, and side-effects of the license module Non-Commercial -- NC", which was made available in an English translation the following year (PDF).

Now a German court has weighed in on the subject, with interesting results (original in German.) The case concerned the use of a photo from Flickr, released under a CC-BY-NC license. The photo appeared on the Web site of Deutschlandradio, part of the German public broadcaster -- a non-commercial organization, that is. Alongside the photo, Deutschlandradio's Web site included the name of the artist, the license, and a link to its terms. Despite this, the photographer demanded 310 Euros plus costs on the grounds that Deutschlandradio had used the photo for commercial purposes.

The public broadcaster pointed out that there was no charge for its Web site, there was no advertising, and no sponsorship. Nonetheless, the judge agreed it should be treated as a commercial use. In coming to this view, the judge drew on German law, which defined "non-commercial" as purely for personal use, and excluded all commercial use in the "generally accepted sense", and that apparently included radio stations, irrespective of how they were funded.

As this underlines, quite what "non-commercial" means is likely to vary from country to country, and possibly even judge to judge. Yet another reason to avoid using CC-BY-NC altogether.

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Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, germany, non-commercial, personal use

Copyright, Invented To Combat Commercial Abuse, Has Become A Means Of Commercial Abuse

from the say-that-again dept

This post is from Jan Velterop, a long-time science publisher, who is one of earliest proponents of "open access" publishing. The following is actually a message he posted to an open access mailing list, which Mike Taylor republished. We asked if we, too, could republish it, and Velterop told us (as we tell people who ask us) that the work should be considered in the public domain, and to do what we want with it.

I've been following this discussion with increasing bemusement. Frankly, it's getting ridiculous, at least in my humble opinion. A discussion such as this one about licensing and copyright only serves to demonstrate that copyright, once conceived as a way to stimulate and enable science and the arts, has degenerated into a way to frustrate, derange and debilitate knowledge exchange.

I'm not the first one to point out that absolutely anything, under any copyright license or none, could be abused for evil purposes or, in more mild circumstances, lead to misunderstandings and accidental abuse. I agree with all those who said it.

The issue here is what science and scientific results stand for. Their purpose is emphatically not "to be copyrightable items." Copyright, invented to combat commercial abuse, has become a means of commercial abuse. The purpose of science and scientific results is to enrich the world's knowledge. Any commercial advantage – appropriate for industrially funded research – can be had by 1) keeping results secret (i.e. not publishing them), or 2) getting a patent. Science, particularly modern science, is nothing without a liberal exchange of ideas and information.

Ideally, scientific publications are not copyrightable at all, and community standards take care of proper acknowledgement. We don't live in an ideal world, so we have to get as close as we can to that ideal, and that is by ameliorating the insidious pernicious effects of copyright with CC-Zero and CC-BY licences.

The existence of the NC rider or stipulation for CC licences is unfortunate and quite damaging. Mainly because of the vagueness and ambiguity of what "commercial use" means. Ideas in published articles can be freely used for commercial purposes of any kind, as ideas are not copyrightable. Only "the way the ideas have been formulated" is covered by copyright, and thus by the NC clause in copyright licenses. In my interpretation, that means that most usage of published material that is not a straightforward selling of text or images can be freely done. But that's my interpretation. And that's exactly where it rubs, because all the NC clause does is introduce hypothetical difficulties and liabilities. As a result of which, NC practically means: "stay away from using this material, because you never know with all those predatory legal eagles around." In other words, it's virtually useless for modern, sophisticated scientific knowledge discovery, which doesn't just consist of reading papers any longer, but increasingly relies on the ability to machine-process large amounts of relevant information, as human ocular reading of even a fraction of the information is not possible anymore. At least not in most fast-moving areas of the sciences. Read this article, or similar ones, if you want to be convinced: "On the impossibility of being expert" BMJ 2010; 341 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c6815 (Published 14 December 2010 – unfortunately behind a paywall).

The taxpayer angle ("must be open because the taxpayer paid for it"), leading to Kent Andersonian notions of knowledge protectionism ("results of research paid by US taxpayers should not be available to non-US citizens unless they pay for it"), is a most unfortunate, visceral and primitive reaction and a complete red herring. For many reasons, not least because the taxpayer, or vicariously the taxman, isn't the party that pockets any money paid for paywalled information. Besides, how far do you go? Americans not being allowed to stay alive due to a cure that was developed with public money in Switzerland unless they pay through the nose for it to the Swiss tax authorities? The "as-long-as-I-am-well-the-rest-of-you-can-go-to-hell" personality disorder. The whole idea is so against the ethos of science that those even thinking in that direction must be taken to be utterly and entirely unsuitable to any role in the scientific community.

Access control and restriction via copyright was at best a necessary evil in the print era; the "necessary," though, has disappeared in the web environment.

Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, knowledge, licensing, open access, science

New Creative Commons Licenses Released For Intergovernmental Organizations

from the no-more-excuses dept

Even though Creative Commons licenses have only been in existence for just over a decade, it's now hard to imagine the online world without them. The ability they offer to modify or even cancel copyright's monopoly has led to all kinds of innovation, and given that success (as well as one or two failures), you might think there's no need for any more CC licenses. Creative Commons begs to differ:

We're pleased to announce a new suite of Creative Commons licenses specifically designed for intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). IGOs produce a wide array of valuable information and content, ranging from scholarly and scientific papers to environmental data. Just like other creators who seek wide dissemination of their works to achieve maximal impact, IGOs benefit from using CC's well understood and widely adopted licenses.

A new license is needed, apparently, because IGOs have one or two special requirements. For those who are interested, Andres Guadamuz has a useful post on his Technollama blog explaining what's new and why. He has no doubts about the significance of these new licences:

It may be easy to miss the monumental importance of this new licence. Creative Commons has enough acceptance in the legal mainstream that it will be adopted by the likes of the World Intellectual Property Organization and the OECD. It could be argued that this might be detrimental to CC, as it shows that it is now being used by the establishment as a fig leaf to cover the deficiencies inherent in copyright protection. The reality is that this sets CC as the international open content standard, and sends a strong message that it should also be adopted by governments to release their own data. In other words, there are no more excuses not to adopt CC, and this can be used by open content advocates everywhere to answer for once and for all stupid questions about the validity of open licences.

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Filed Under: copyright, creative commons, intergovernmental organizations

AOL Unclear On The Concept: Threatens Startup For Properly Using Creative Commons Content

from the that's-not-how-it-works dept

Oh, AOL. The company wants people to believe that it's a new kind of company, but it apparently can't help acting in a really dumb way. The latest: the company is threatening a company that is properly making use of AOL content that is available under a Creative Commons license. Pro Populi is using content from Crunchbase, the database of startup info that originated as a part of the site TechCrunch, both of which are now owned by AOL. The content is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY attribution license, which means it can be used in pretty much any way, even commercially, so long as it's properly attributed. That appears to be the case with Pro Populi, which is using the data in its People+ app.

AOL, however, has sent a cease-and-desist:

“[Y]our company’s People+ product in essence has made wholesale use of CrunchBase content to simply replicate what CrunchBase does,” wrote Grossman in another letter to the startup. The app, Grossman adds, “duplicates what CrunchBase offers in order to compete directly with us.”

Except, of course, that's entirely allowed under the license in question. So AOL is simply wrong here. Amusingly, AOL is trying to get around its blatant wrongness from a different direction, claiming that the scraping of the data abused the terms of their API that makes the use of the data improper:

That’s because Pro Populi downloaded the database through the CrunchBase API, a digital interface that allows anyone access to the data. Buried in the terms-of-service for the CrunchBase API is this caveat: AOL “reserves the right to continually review and evaluate all uses of the API, including those that appear more competitive than complementary in nature.” And AOL “reserves the right in its sole discretion (for any reason or for no reason) and at anytime without notice to You to ... terminate your rights” to use “any CrunchBase content.”

That clause is completely bogus. AOL can decide to forbid someone from using the API if they feel it violates their terms, but they cannot "terminate" the license to use the content. The content is free to use under the license, and there's nothing AOL can legally do about it -- other than lie and be a bully, which appears to be the choice the company has made. Thankfully, EFF is now representing Pro Populi and has sent a detailed letter explaining all of this to AOL. Hopefully, next time, their lawyers will actually understand their own licenses before misrepresenting them in bogus threat letters.

Filed Under: api, copyright, creative commons, crunchbase
Companies: aol, pro populi

NSA Uses EFF Images To Explain Tor; EFF Jokingly Claims Creative Commons Violation

from the now-wouldn't-that-be-a-fun-lawsuit dept

With this morning's revelation of how the NSA and GCHQ are trying to attack Tor, some of the presentations being used by the NSA to explain Tor are somewhat interesting or amusing. For example, in one presentation about the program EgotisticalGiraffe (I don't make 'em up, so don't ask), the NSA amusingly feels the need to highlight the fact that "terrorists" use Tor: In a different presentation, the NSA helpfully tries to explain how Tor works by making use of the EFF's own Tor explainer. The whole thing is labeled Top Secret, and, somewhat amusingly, the EFF jokingly claimed that this likely violates their Creative Commons license, before saying that the NSA is free to use the images under fair use. To be honest, I'm not sure that's actually accurate either. It looks like the EFF uses the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 3.0 US) license, which requires attribution and that's basically it. The images show the EFF's logo, so you could argue they've properly complied with the license.

Either way, another randomly amusing tidbit in the midst of all of this.

Filed Under: creative commons, fair use, nsa, nsa surveillance, tor
Companies: eff

Fed Up Germans Are Trying To Crowdfund A GEMA Alternative That Isn't Evil

from the about-time dept

We've had many stories over the years about just how evil and awful the German music collection society GEMA can be. I've been to Germany a few times over the past few years, and have spoken to musicians who tell me horrifying stories about how you basically have to sign up with GEMA, and then GEMA controls what you can do with your music. For example, I met a band that wanted to license its music under a Creative Commons license, but GEMA doesn't like to recognize such licenses. Another band showed me its "official" website, which it told GEMA about, and then its "real" website, which it told its fans about, where the band could actually put up their own music for free. GEMA is basically controlled by the legacy interests and only pays attention to a small group of very successful musicians. Everyone else is left out in the cold. There's a reason why GEMA is the only major collection society that still hasn't worked out a deal with YouTube.

Last year we wrote about some folks in Germany who were trying to do something about this, starting a competing collection society that understood that "free" wasn't necessarily a bad thing, and which actually respected its members and the new opportunities presented by the internet, beyond looking at them all as a cash register to shake as much money as possible out of. This organization, called C3S or the Cultural Commons Collecting Society is finally getting off the ground, and wouldn't you know it, they're turning to crowdfunding to make it work. Within a very short period of time, they've raised over €34,000 of the €50,000 target -- though they are really aiming for €200,000.

They point out that they're not against traditional licensing at all, but think there's room for a more forward looking organization that recognizes both traditional licensing and more modern options that many musicians want. Furthermore, unlike GEMA, C3S is designed to be open, social and democratic. This should be an interesting project, worth following.

Filed Under: collection society, creative commons, crowdfunding, germany, licensing
Companies: c3s, gema

Australian Census Data Released Under CC License, But Official Site Tries To Make It Hard To Download

from the once-free,-always-free dept

The whole point about adopting Creative Commons licenses is to make it easier for people to share and use works released under them. Sometimes, though, you get the impression that certain organizations adopting these licenses would rather that didn't happen, as in the following case from Australia, reported by IT News:

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released the latest census data for free under a Creative Commons license but appears to be steering people towards a $250 mailed out DVD rather than making it easy to download the information directly over the internet.

Programmer and freelance journalist Grahame Bowland who first noticed it, said the government agency is going to great lengths to discourage people from downloading the files directly by dint of a convoluted site layout and Javascript functions that obfuscate file paths.

The post then goes on to describe in detail some of the attempts to make it difficult to download all of the census data, including a hard-to-find registration page, a complex matrix of download options, and Javascript code that does stuff like this:

// Function: guidGenerator
// Description:returns a pseudo-random GUID
//This is appended to a url for 2 reasons
//1. to make the URL unique, so that the browser always gets it and doesn't use a cached version
//2. to make a URL look like its got a unique key, in a naive attempt to fool a not-so-wily hacker
//into thinking they can't download a datapack directly if they know the URL pattern, because they
//need a unique key.

Notice how anyone who might want to download datapacks directly is branded a hacker. That's a worrying attitude, since it seems to equate people who want to take advantage of the CC license to explore the census without jumping through the site's hoops as shady subversives (I doubt the comment used the term "hacker" in its more positive sense).

As the IT News story suggests, the motivation for this obfuscation seems to be to encourage people to pay AU $250 (about US $257) for the DVD version instead. To save others from having to deal with the unhelpful Web site, Bowland generously stumped up the $250 himself, and made the full census database freely available as a torrent, as is perfectly legal under the CC-BY license. This shows perfectly why it is pointless trying to make it hard for people to download content that is CC licensed: once anyone has obtained a copy, they can then make it available in a more convenient form, neatly by-passing forlorn attempts to control something that has been set free forever.

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Filed Under: australia, creative commons, open data

French Politicians Worry That Free Creative Commons Works Devalue 'Legal' Offers

from the what??? dept

As Techdirt noted last year, France has a regrettable habit of dreaming up really bad ideas when it comes to the Internet, most famously with the three-strikes scheme, now known there by the name of the body the oversees it -- Hadopi. Guillaume Champeau points us to a piece in the French newspaper Libération, which contains yet more appalling possibilities (original in French).

The article concerns Pierre Lescure and his team, who have been charged by the French government with coming up with ways to help the world of culture in France adapt to the Internet economy. One idea, kindly suggested by the French recording industry, is to replace Hadopi's court procedures for those accused of unauthorized file sharing with an automatic fine of 140 euros after three strikes. That is, from being guilty until proven innocent, as now, under the proposed scheme those accused would simply be found guilty without any further discussion. And then there's this:

In parallel, no de-penalization for non-commercial sharing, but a desire to "increase the value" of free licences of the Creative Commons kind. The Lescure team believes that letting works circulate freely (as they do now...) would hinder the development of legal offers, particularly VOD [Video On Demand].

Yes, apparently the way to "increase the value" is to no longer allow Creative Commons content to "circulate freely" because it might compete with other business models. Lescure has now taken to Twitter (kudos that at least he's on Twitter) to state that what was reported bears "almost no relation to what we are preparing." But he doesn't explain what exactly they are planning, nor does he deny that their plans involve Creative Commons licenses.

We shall have to wait to see what he has in mind. But it would be hard to find a better symbol of the French establishment's attitude to the Internet and its extraordinary new possibilities than trying to make people pay for works that could be shared freely (because their creators want that), on the grounds that it might hinder a service that turns the Net into television.

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Filed Under: creative commons, devalue, france, free, hadopi