stories filed under: "fair use"
EFF Wants To Tack 'Fair Use Principles' Onto Studios' Content Guidelines
from the things-that-will-go-over-like-a-lead-balloon dept
Last week, we wrote about how the big studios, along with some smaller user-generated content sites had put together a bunch of meaningless guidelines for how "user generated content" sites should deal with content that might be unauthorized. The backers of the guidelines insisted that any site that followed the guidelines wouldn't then get sued over copyright issues. Of course, it seemed a little silly because agreeing to the principles meant giving up the right to do things that were perfectly legal and that a company might find reasonable to grow their business. It also wasn't a particular balanced document, since it only gave lip service to "fair use." Apparently to compensate for that, the EFF has come out with its own Fair Use Principles for user-generated content sites that will surely be almost entirely ignored by the studios. While it does help the EFF make the point that fair use is important, but neglected, in the original, it's unlikely that too many people will notice or care. The studios aren't interested in anything fair here. Note how ironic it is that a set of principles for a user-generated content site wasn't developed in the open at all, but passed down as if on stone tablets. This isn't about a balanced document, it's about tilting the table in the studios' favor.Fox Goes After Republican Presidential Candidates For Online Copyright Violations Over Debate Footage
from the fair-use-be-damned! dept
Earlier this month, we wondered if Fox was going to sue some Republican Congressional Representatives, after they used Simpsons characters in an awful parody press release. A Fox spokesperson claimed it was a violation of copyright, but it seemed unlikely that Fox would actually do anything about it. However, in a somewhat similar issue, it looks like Fox is actually going after Republican candidates for using Fox debate footage on their websites. Apparently, Fox first targeted just John McCain for using debate footage, but after being called out on not treating to the other candidates fairly, sent cease-and-desist letters to all candidates using Fox footage. What would be interesting is if any of the candidates decides to challenge Fox on this one. The specific letter that was sent to McCain apparently demanded that he not use any Fox material on his website -- and that raises questions about whether or not McCain actually needs Fox's permission, as what he's doing could be considered fair use. It could make for an interesting legal challenge -- but somehow it seems unlikely that any of the presidential candidates wants to get wrapped up in a legal battle over fair use right now.Filed Under: copyright, fair use, john mccain, mitt romney, presidential candidates, rudy giuliani
Companies: fox
Will Fox Sue Congress For Simpsons Parody?
from the d'oh! dept
If you follow politics outside of the tech world you've probably seen plenty of talk in the last week or so about the battle over SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The details of the debate really aren't worth getting into on a tech/business news site, but a bunch of Republican Congressmen put out what can only be considered a parody press release using characters from the TV show The Simpsons to try to highlight their side of the debate. This was so random and bizarre that a few people actually wondered if the Republican site had been hacked. That turned out not to be the case, but apparently none of the Representatives who put together the mock press release sought the approval of Twentieth Century Fox, who apparently is not at all happy that Simpsons characters are being used in this manner: "Twentieth Century Fox was unaware of the illegal use of characters from The Simpsons in this press release. Let me assure you, Fox did not authorize this use. Characters from The Simpsons may not be used in this manner…" Some would argue that parody is covered by fair use, but that may only be true if the parody is of The Simpsons itself, rather than using them for a parody of something else. Either way, while Congress has been bending over backwards to give the entertainment industry everything it wishes when it comes to keeping control over their creative works, it seems that even those same Representatives can think of cases where it made perfect sense to them to make use of characters without having to first license them. Somehow, why do I get the feeling this lesson won't stick and these same Reps will have no problem putting in place more stringent copyright laws that eat away at fair use?Filed Under: congress, fair use, parody, schip, the simpsons
Companies: congress, fox, news corp
Sony-BMG Exec Tells Two Whoppers In File-Sharing Trial
from the say-what? dept
Wired's Threat Level blog has been doing some excellent work covering the first RIAA file-sharing case to go to trial, in my home state of Minnesota. In the latest post, reporter David Kravets quotes a couple of whoppers in the testimony of Sony BMG exec Jennifer Pariser. First, Pariser claims that "Selling music is the only way a record company makes money." That's just silly. While record sales are certainly a major source of revenue for record labels, there are lots of other revenue streams out there: concert tickets, merchandise, online subscriptions, endorsement deals, advertising revenue, and so forth. Just yesterday we had an excellent example of a band experimenting with offering name-your-own-price downloads coupled with a premium "discbox." And even some of Pariser's fellow record label execs have begun acknowledging that relying so heavily on music sales is a bad business strategy. At least I can see why Pariser might have thought it was a good legal strategy to pretend that record sales are the only conceivable revenue source for the music industry. Her other claim is even more puzzling: when asked if it's legal to make just one copy of a song you've legally purchased, she apparently said that was "a nice way of saying, 'steals just one copy.'" Not only is that flatly untrue as a matter of law, but saying it also seems like a lousy legal strategy, because (as Kravets points out) some of the jurors probably own MP3 players and won't like being accused of stealing. It's also worth mentioning that this is something the industry keeps flip-flopping on. Sometimes (like when they're arguing before the Supreme Court) they say that of course iPods are legal. Other times they call anyone who rips their CD collections for personal use thieves.Filed Under: business models, copyright, fair use, file sharing, recording industry
Companies: sony bmg
Fair Use: Worth More To The Economy Than Copyright?
from the take-that,-RIAA dept
I've been doing some research over the last few months into the economic impact of products where intellectual property protections are either ignored or non-existent, to see how the economics plays out. I'll have a lot more to say on this in the future, but the impact is really impressive in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. What's impressed me the most is how large the impact is -- in that the overall benefits to the economy in those cases are often staggering in nature. Yet, most of the press focuses on bogus one-sided reports on the impact of "piracy" which never seem to take into account any of the beneficial economic impacts of having producers purposely ignore intellectual property restrictions. It appears that some tech companies are getting a little sick of the bogus reports coming out of the BSA, RIAA and MPAA as well... so they've decided to release their own study, showing that the economic benefit of fair use is much, much bigger than the economic impact of copyright. In fact, the report shows that the "fair use industry" generated $2.2 trillion of value for the economy, while the copyright industry only generated $1.3 trillion. You can read the full report (pdf file) yourself.The report is put out by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, of which Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are members. There's little doubt that the report is just as biased as the reports on piracy numbers -- but really what this report highlights is how bogus the numbers are in the piracy reports. You can put out a report that'll show just about any "loss" or "gain" if you get to set the assumptions and conveniently ignore certain things and double count other things. In this case, the CCIA was fairly rigid in using WTO approved methodology for how countries are supposed to count the value added for the copyright issue -- they just applied it to industries that are based on fair use in some way or another. You can certainly quibble with how they pick which industries are enabled by fair use, but at no worse a level than how the copyright lobby defines the importance of copyright-based industries. Either way, though, if the copyright industry is going to keep publishing its bogus reports, it's hard to fault the CCIA for using the same methodology to show how much more important fair use is. The next time anyone cites the bogus piracy numbers, they should at least be forced to acknowledge these numbers on the value of fair use as well as a counterweight. They may be bogus, but they're equally bogus to the piracy numbers. In the meantime, it's probably also worth noting that Microsoft is on both sides of this debate -- as an active member of the BSA which is famous for its bogus numbers, as well as a member of the CCIA. Apparently, the company is a little confused on its position on copyright.
Copyright Lobby Continues To Pretend Fair Use Is Not A Right
from the can-we-kill-this-myth? dept
Recently, we had a post about yet another overreaching copyright statement on a website that made claims to rights that copyright simply does not grant. In the comments, someone responded with the silly line that fair use is not a right, it's just a "defense." This is both wrong and misleading. It is true that fair use is a defense that can be used in court -- but the reason it can be used as a defense is because it's a right provided to people who are making use of copyrighted works without permission. This was explained quite clearly by Adam Wasserman in our comments.Apparently, the whole "fair use isn't a right" line is a part of the copyright lobby's talking points this week, as Patrick Ross (who is paid to promote stronger copyright laws) has written up an entire editorial at News.com stating that fair use is not a right. He's flat out wrong. The entire reason that a fair use defense is allowed is because it is a right. The rest of Ross's argument is typically misleading or outright wrong. He never explains why it's okay for companies to exaggerate and lie about what copyright allows them to do -- other than to suggest it would just be too complicated to have a copyright notice that accurately explains fair use. It may true that it would be cumbersome, but that doesn't explain why copyright holders get to lie about what kind of protections copyright provides them. Ross, as per usual, believes that the rights of the copyright holder are more important than the rights of the user (which is exactly the opposite of why copyrights were put in place in the first place). Therefore, he writes as though trampling on users' rights is no big deal, as long as it protects all copyright holders' rights. Unfortunately for Ross, our nation's founders were quite worried about the dangers of granting monopoly protection and were much more focused on protecting the rights of citizens to make use of information. They were quite clear that monopolies need to have their limits -- and too many companies are overstepping those limits.
NFL Still Thinks It Can Tell News Organizations How They Can Report The News
from the that's-not-how-this-all-works dept
Back in July, we couldn't figure out how the NFL could get away with telling news organizations that they could only put 45 seconds of video online that had either game clips or videos of players. This made no sense. The NFL does not have any right to determine how reporters report the news. If they conduct their own interviews with players or film their own footage, they should be able to broadcast as much of it as they feel appropriate. They also shouldn't (as demanded by the NFL) have to link back to the NFL's official website. While these may be what the NFL wants, it has no way of actually enforcing this -- as news reporters don't need the NFL's permission to broadcast an interview they filmed with a player. However, it still seems like broadcasters aren't up to challenging the NFL on this bogus rule. Reader Jon writes in to let us know that the NFL (how kind of it) has exempted NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN from these rules. However, the reasoning isn't that the NFL never had the right to demand such things of news organizations in the first place -- but that these TV networks have already paid fees to the NFL averaging more than $3 billion a year. Therefore, the NFL figures, they might as well post slightly more video online. Of course, this is still ridiculous. If any news organization wants to film their own interviews with players and broadcast them online, that's between the player being interviewed and the news organization. The NFL should have no say at all over what a news organization can or cannot post on their website. Any news organization going along with these restrictions should have its journalistic integrity questioned, since they're allowing the subjects of a story to dictate how they present the news.Filed Under: control, fair use, news, nfl, reporting
Companies: nfl
Law Firm Freaks Out That Ridiculous Corporate Song Leaked Out To Blogs
from the enjoy-the-fame-of-the-Streisand-Effect dept
I must admit that there's something fascinating (in the "train wreck" sense) to me about corporate songs and anthems. It's amazing how many of them there are out there, and I'm disappointed that ZDNet UK gave up its old chart that supposedly tracked the popularity of those songs. While these songs are both awful and entertaining at the same time, you really wouldn't have expected there to be a copyright battle over one of them showing up on a blog... except, of course, if the song was about a law firm. Denise Howell points out that the Above the Law blog posted a horrifyingly awful song from the law firm Nixon Peabody. While you might think that any firm that would create a song that bad must have a sense of humor, it appears that Nixon Peabody not only didn't mean for the song to be funny, but they're taking the matter so seriously they're threatening Above the Law with copyright infringement. Of course, as the guy who runs the site notes, he has a pretty strong fair use defense on using the song (which the folks at Nixon Peabody apparently go to great lengths to claim is not a "theme song" since it bizarrely goes against New Jersey's rules of professional conduct for lawyers to advertise themselves with music). However, of course, as with any attempt to hide something, it seems likely this song is only going to get more attention.Filed Under: copyright, corporate songs, fair use
Companies: nixon peabody
EFF Sues Universal Music For Getting Home Video Of Kid Dancing Pulled From YouTube
from the DMCA-abuse dept
Earlier this year, the EFF sued Viacom for being overly aggressive in trying to police its copyrighted content on YouTube. Specifically, Viacom had sent a DMCA takedown notice for a parody clip of The Colbert Report that was clearly protected by fair use. After first denying it had sent the takedown notice, Viacom eventually 'fessed up and then settled the case, promising to be much more mindful of not pulling clips that have a clear fair use defense, and also making it easier for those whose videos were wrongly pulled to get them back online. If you thought that others in the entertainment industry might take notice of this and be a bit more careful about things, you'd be wrong apparently.The EFF has felt the need to step in again, this time suing Universal Music for getting a home video of a little kid dancing pulled from YouTube. The video is only 29-seconds long and is clearly fair use. More importantly, there is simply no way that anyone would claim that this somehow hurt the commercial value of the song (well, I guess Universal Music implicitly was claiming exactly that). No one is going to use this 29-second clip as a substitute for getting the actual song. In fact, if anything, the video might encourage people to go out and find the song to purchase. Also amusing, of course, is that the song in question is by Prince, who's been in the news quite a bit lately for having a much better understanding of how the music industry works than those who run the record labels. Either way, it appears that the EFF is building up a number of such DMCA-abuse cases -- and it seems likely that they'll eventually use these to demonstrate the problems of the DMCA.
Filed Under: copyright, dmca, fair use
Companies: eff, universal music, youtube
