Should Americans Have To Ask What They're 'Allowed' To Express?

from the permission-culture dept

Free Speech means you don’t
have to ask if you’re allowed
to say what you want.

I would kill myself
If I had faith in the Law
Thank God for no faith.

Filed Under: free speech, permission

How I Had To Give Permission To Quote And Paraphrase Myself

from the permission-culture dept

It's all just so bleepin' INSANE.

Here's the deal. Two, no three, years ago a buddy of mine, who shall be nameless so he’s not associated with this mini-quagmire, asked me to contribute a chapter to a book he's editing on a subject near and dear to me. Fine. Glad to. So, over a year ago I put some of my work-in-progress online at The Valve, a group blog where I have privileges, in order to get feedback on my ideas.

Which I did. Thank you very much, interwebs.

Time goes by, I turn in my final chapter. My buddy likes it, his editor likes it. And then the publisher sends some bots out on the web to compare text in their book-in-progress to whatever's on the web. What happens? My chapter gets flagged because, hey! some of my prose is out there on the web.

And you know why some of the prose in my chapter is out on the web you clueless bot-masters? Because I put it there! That's why.

Anyhow, my buddy sends me a note explaining the situation and asking me to send him a note explaining that, yes, I put that stuff out there on The Valve. Here’s my exact message: “Some of the prose in my [name redacted to protect the innocent] chapter first appeared online at The Valve — where, for example, I’m quoting [some worthy authority]. So I’m just re-using my own prose.”

My buddy passed that on to his handlers and we figured that was the end of it. But, no, not good enough. His handlers got back to him, this time with the very passages the bots had snooped from the web.

Now I had to read those very passages and swear on a stack of virtual Non-denominational Multi-cultural Sacred Books that each and every one of those words was mine and I wrote them both on The Valve and in my book chapter. Really and truly in the names of a Supreme Force in the Universe Including Intelligent Quantum Fluctuations and Digital Devices, yes, the prose is mine.

Thus I swore. So it is.

And, you know what? They accepted my word. This time. But next time, who knows?

What I’d like to know is just why it even got back to me. After all, my name is on my posts. But, I suppose the Bill Benzon on those posts could be some other Bill Benzon, you know, the one from alternative universe sigma epsilon 37,901 delta delta. When my editor buddy sent me the suspicious passages there was no name attached. Maybe the bot didn’t return with names, just prose.

Well, why the BLEEP! not? Is it so hard to program a bot to do that? Would it be so hard for someone to check the name of the passages delivered up by their bot? Maybe someone checked and they didn’t believe their eyes. Maybe they did believe their eyes, but just had to make sure that we’re all in the same universe, the one where the land of the free and the home of Tang (a benefit of the Apollo moon shots dontcha know) has insane copyright laws.

Maybe they’re under orders to do meaningless ritual acts so as to appease the restless spirit of Sonny Bono that’s wandering around in the ether just waiting for an opportunity to materialize and tell someone that it wasn’t his idea, it was the diminutive rodent with the cheeky attitude and the greedy corporate daddy (who’s a person, dontcha know) that did it.

Crossposted from QuestionCopyright.

Filed Under: bill benzon, culture, permission

Is It Rude To Link To Someone Without First Asking Permission?

from the not-that-I've-ever-heard dept

Earlier this week, I wrote an analysis of some silly claims from Canadian IP lawyer James Gannon's sarcastic suggestion that copying money is just like copying content. Gannon stopped by in our comments... and oddly did not respond to a single point that I raised about his faulty analysis. Instead, he only commented to claim that it was somehow rude or discourteous of me to link to his piece and to discuss it without first asking for permission. I found this somewhat shocking. I've never heard that it's common courtesy to ask before you link to someone. Yet Gannon insisted that most people who link to him first ask his permission and he suggests, snidely, that his readership has higher "standards" in regards to how they view content.

Of course, when you combine this with Nina Paley's excellent post about how asking permission when none is needed is rude, it seems that we have a pretty serious disagreement here. Not surprisingly, I agree wholeheartedly with Nina and find Gannon's position both troubling and enlightening when it comes to his confused interpretation of intellectual property issues. He seems to think that a permission society is just fine. Those of us who actually create for a living know that this is not the case. It's a distraction and an annoyance when people feel the need to keep asking you for permission to do what they naturally have the right to do. Permission society is one that is less creative and less willing and able to create. Permission society is the exact opposite of what copyright law is supposed to create. It's not supposed to be a drag on creation. The whole point of things like fair use is that you don't have to ask for permission because it's inefficient to ask for permission in those cases. That he's suggesting that it's somehow discourteous not to ask for permission to do what the law clearly allows is really quite troubling.

In the meantime, has anyone actually ever heard that it's common courtesy to ask someone permission to link to them? I spend a lot of time online and I link to a lot of websites (over 38,000 posts last we checked...) and no one has ever suggested that I should have asked permission first.

Filed Under: james gannon, links, nina paley, permission

Yes Means Yes

from the problems-with-permission-culture dept

Please don’t ask my permission to re-use my work. YOU ALREADY HAVE PERMISSION. Please copy, share, re-use, redistribute, edit, modify, sell, etc.


Asking permission wastes your time, and mine. You might not mind wasting your time. Many people think asking for permission is a “sign of respect.” But what about my time?

Information (including all of my work) is not scarce. Attention (time) is.

Emails get lost in spam filters. They get lost amid the hundreds of other emails in my inbox. I’ve been known to take vacations and actually get away from my computer for a few days – something I should be doing more often. So what happens if you don’t get any response to your permission request? Do you not reuse the work? A work that has been explicitly made Free, in the hope that you will reuse it? Not reusing the work harms the work, and harming a work is disrespectful. Delaying reusing the work likewise harms the work, in smaller increments.

Suppose a “respectful” email asking for permission which has already been explicitly granted doesn’t get caught in a spam filter or lost in some other glitch. Suppose it actualy makes it into my inbox. Now I am obligated to respond – the requester essentially said, “I’m not going to use this work unless you respond.” As “respectful” as this sounds, it places an unfair burden on me. The work, and any use of the work, should not be held hostage pending my checking and responding to email.

It is not “respectful” to make me do more, unnecessary work.

More importantly, asking permission is bad for the work itself. If you refuse to reuse the work unless I send you an email, you are blocking an expression or distribution of the work. How many days or weeks or months are you willing to put it off pending my ability to process email? Or worse, someone thinks it’s “respectful” to require me to sign papers and mail them back. Yes, this happens. I have such paperwork sitting right here, telling me that unless I sign it and mail it back, they won’t use the work they already have explicit permission to use. How is it “respectful” to make me jump through more hoops before they redistribute or remix a work I’ve made explicitly Free?

If you want to show respect, please send me something like this instead:

Dear Nina,

I thought you might like to know I’ve reused _________________  in _________________. Check it out at (insert URL here). Thanks for making the work Free!

Love,
Someone Who Understands Yes means Yes

Ahh, lovely. Thank you!

A complaint I hear often is that nowadays, thanks to the inerwebs, not only do artists “have to give their work away for free” but they also “have to be businessmen.” HA! One goal of freeing my work is to free me of paperwork, contracts, and the role of manager – and what is having to oversee and administrate every re-use but management? In the “Intellectual Property” model, artists either have to do much more negotiating and managing and paperwork, or they have to pay someone else to do it for them. They have to be businessmen, or hire businessmen. And hiring businessmen (agents, lawyers, etc.) still requires much paperwork, negotiating, and contracts.

Some still insist that I’ve “maintained more control” over Sita Sings the Blues. The point is I have maintained no control over it, and that benefits me. The point is I don’t have to be a business(wo)man. The point is that other people, the crowd, distribute the work, and cost me nothing.

As long as they don’t ask for permission.

Filed Under: permission, respect, time

Big Media To Innovative App Maker: Stop Innovating Without Our Permission!

from the permission-nation dept

There are a bunch of different newsreader type apps out there, and for years there have been all sorts of apps that let you aggregate content into personal collections. A new one, which recently hit the market for iPads, is called Zite and, apparently, it's getting pretty good reviews. Basically, it can look at what you follow on things like Twitter and Google Reader and formats an algorithmically chosen aggregation of that content to look something like a magazine. If you're familiar with Flipboard, it's somewhat similar, but the implementation is a bit different. I remember when Flipboard came out, there were copyright questions concerning how it scraped various websites.

However, for whatever reason, this new service Zite has really set off pretty much everyone in the traditional newspaper business. A list of who's who in the newspaper/magazine world, including the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Dow Jones, Scripps, Gannett, McClatchy, Time and even National Geogrpahic, all teamed up to send a nastygram (embedded below) that effectively says "hey, we're all for innovation, but you can't innovate without first paying us."

Now, to be clear, technically these newspapers may have a point concerning the fact that Zite displays their content. But if you start to go down that path, you suddenly realize that so does a browser. Zite is really just a form of a browser, that tries to make their content more useful. Again, some may point out that Zite strips some ads from publications, but, again, so do many browsers that have ad blocking extensions installed. When viewed that way, how is Zite really anything other than a specialized browser? If they're claiming that's infringing, then is it really that different from claiming that other browsers/aggregating tools are infringing.

And, honestly, if creating an app that makes it easier to read your content is a threat to your business, you're doing business wrong.

I will say I'm a bit surprised to see the NY Times missing from the list of angry publications, since they've gotten upset about similar apps in the past, but really, this just seems like another example of publications thinking that anyone making their content more readable has to first get permission. If someone wants to make Techdirt content more readable, please go right ahead.

Filed Under: copyright, flipboard, innovation, permission, zite
Companies: associated press, down jones, gannett, mcclatchy, scripps, washington post, zite

Yes, It's Legal To 'Tag' Someone In A Photo On Facebook Without Permission

from the in-case-you-were-wondering dept

While I've heard the argument that in Europe, it's possible to use various privacy laws to demand that someone remove a photo or "tag" of the requester, in the US that's not the case (barring other circumstances that might require the removal). However, Evan Brown has the details on a custody case, in which a woman (the mother) sought to bar the use of a Facebook photo as evidence. The photo showed her drinking alcohol, which a psychologist claimed could interfere with medicine the woman was taking. The woman claimed that because anyone else on Facebook could upload photos and tag them with her name, she hadn't given permission, and thus the photos should not have been published. The court explained why this is meaningless:

The court held that "[t]here is nothing within the law that requires [one's] permission when someone takes a picture and posts it on a Facebook page. There is nothing that requires [one's] permission when she [is] "tagged" or identified as a person in those pictures."

Of course, it does seem that other issues could (and in some cases were) raised: including the accuracy of the photo, the proof that it was actually alcohol, etc. But simply protesting the use of the photo as evidence because it was uploaded/tagged by someone else appears to be a non-starter.

Filed Under: permission, privacy, tags
Companies: facebook

Music Publishers Angry That Apple Didn't First Grovel To Them About 60-Second Song Previews

from the it-helps-you-sell-more dept

It's really incredible to watch music industry folks shoot themselves in the foot over and over again with a simple inability to understand that promotions can lead to more sales, and that you don't need to get paid for every promotional effort. We've seen some in the industry gleefully admit that they'd rather have $1 today than $100 tomorrow. But this sort of thinking seems to pervade so much of the music industry at times that it's really quite stunning.

The latest comes from rumors that Apple was going to double song sample lengths in iTunes from 30-seconds to 60-seconds. There's apparently plenty of good reasons for this, as research has shown that 60-second samples lead to more purchases.

And yet, despite the rumors, you'll notice that Steve Jobs did not announce the expected doubling of samples. Why? Apparently Apple had the approval of all four of the major record labels... but he forgot to go groveling and beg for permission from the other side of the coin: the music publishers. Apparently, various music publishers read the rumors of the doubling and were quite upset that Apple hadn't asked for their permission, and even started lawyering up to sue, in case Apple announced such a plan without first getting permission from various music publishers.

And people say we're exaggerating when we show just how ridiculous music licensing is. This isn't about copyright or revenue or anything. This is just childish foot-stomping by a group that demands that everyone ask permission before helping them make more money. Stunning.

Filed Under: copyright, itunes, permission, previews, publishers
Companies: apple, nmpa

Do Libraries Need Permission To Lend Out Ebooks?

from the they-shouldn't dept

Reader OG points us to this NY Times article about how libraries are increasingly offering ebooks for download. This, of course, seems like a good idea, and fits in with the purpose of a library, but where the article gets either laughable or head-bangingly annoying is where it starts discussing how publishers have serious problems with this whole concept. Some publishers are refusing to allow libraries to lend out their ebooks...which makes me wonder why the publishers have any say in the matter. Thanks to the right of first sale, a library should be able to lend out an ebook if it's legally purchased it without having to get the publisher's permission.

Furthermore, the rest of the discussion is just silly. There are arguments about how many ebooks can be "checked out" at once or how the DRM works (which blocks the most popular ebook readers from being supported). There's also an issue of publishers charging libraries much higher prices for ebooks, and scoffing at a librarian who suggests that libraries should be allowed to offer as many copies as needed of an ebook to lend at the same time, and just pay the publishers a nominal fee.

It's hard to describe how insane this whole discussion sounds. Here you have a fantastic tool to support a library's main purpose in the world, and we're arguing over what sorts of artificial restrictions to set up to limit that tool from actually being useful? It's as if we discovered a way to make all the food the world ever needed, and we sit around talking about how to make sure that most people don't get fed. It would make me laugh if it weren't so disturbing that people seem to think this is a good thing.

Filed Under: ebooks, lending, libraries, permission, publishers

MLB Refuses To Give Permission To Guy To Describe Game To A Friend

from the expressed-written-permission dept

A couple years ago, law professor Wendy Seltzer used the NFL as an example of sports leagues performing copyfraud, by claiming copyright control beyond what is allowed by law. Specifically, she was talking about the warning mentioned at some point during every game. For the NFL it was: "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." In Seltzer's case, amazingly, the NFL sent a DMCA takedown of her posting that clip to YouTube -- giving her another "teachable moment" on copyright abuse.

And yet, sports leagues still continue the copyfraud. One of the fine folks over at Consumerist, Phil Villarreal, found the wording of Major League Baseball's warning quite questionable:

"Any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, is prohibited,"

Unlike the NFL one, at least it didn't say "descriptions," but "account" is pretty close. So, Villarreal contacted MLB to request "express written consent" to provide an "account" of the game he had watched to a friend. To its credit, MLB responded and asked him to call someone in its business development department... who (perhaps reasonably) thought it was a joke and did not provide the written consent (and stopped responding to calls and emails).

Now, obviously, this is a bit of a joke (and a funny one), but it does highlight a rather serious problem. Copyright holders are pretty regularly claiming significantly more rights than they actually hold over content, and many people simply assume that they can do this. This leads to them to think that they don't have basic rights concerning not just "fair use" but stuff that is obviously not covered by copyright, such as an "account of this game." There really should be sanctions against such copyfraud.

Filed Under: baseball, copyfraud, copyright, permission, sports
Companies: mlb.com

Why Should XM Have To Get Permission From The Recording Industry To Innovate?

from the still-asking dept

In a rather disappointing move, satellite radio company XM has now settled with EMI concerning a lawsuit over its Inno device, that allowed users to record XM streams. This follows XM's similar settlements with the other major record labels last year. No terms are being announced, which is problematic. The whole problem with this lawsuit was the fact that the record labels seemed to believe that XM was unable to innovate without getting their permission and paying them. The Inno device was simply a device to record satellite radio streams -- which is perfectly legal. Time shifting and recording radio is well-established as being legal. But the recording industry used the case to try to squeeze extra royalty payments out of XM.

This is exactly the sort of "chilling effect" that people keep pointing out when it comes to copyright laws. These laws put the entertainment companies in a position where they get to dictate what kind of devices are legal and which are not. Increasing the uncertainty over whether or not a simple device like the Inno is legal, and forcing a two year legal battle to take place is no way to promote progress and innovation. It just makes many companies unwilling to go through that process just to offer the type of device that makes perfect sense and which customers want. It's doubly troublesome in that the RIAA specifically said that it would not step in to prevent these types of devices. Except that it did.

With that said, I was hoping that XM would stand up to the lawsuits and set a precedent, making it clear that the record labels cannot sue to block new technologies. However, with all of these settlements, that's not the case -- so the uncertainty and the chilling effects remain for all others. No settlement terms have been released, so it may even be that XM agreed to pay off the record labels to get them to settle, which would be even worse. It would just give the labels that much more incentive to keep suing every innovative new product that hits the market. This is extortion that slows down innovation and progress -- which is what we thought copyright was supposed to be promoting.

Filed Under: copyright, inno, innovation, permission
Companies: emi, xm