Adam Savage On Why Copyright And Trademark Holders Need To Get Over Their Obsession With 'Control'

from the it's-not-about-control dept

Reader aster points us to a tested.com video in which Adam Savage talks about copyright issues. I've seen Savage mention on Twitter in the past that he's a closet copyright geek who is very interested in copyright policy, and the conversation is definitely interesting, focusing on the high profile cease and desist letter that Fox sent over Jayne hats. The frustrating thing to me, in watching this, is that the conversation jumps back and forth between copyright and trademark without clarification. In fact, they're almost entirely talking about trademark, while saying they're talking about copyright. Frustratingly, they suggest that you have to enforce copyright to keep it, which is simply not true. What they mean is that for trademark -- not copyright -- you have to make some effort to prevent confusion or your mark becoming generic if you want to keep that mark (though this has nothing to do with copyright). You can see the segment below, though the main discussion starts up around the 7:30 mark: Still, Savage does make some really good points about fair use and the over-obsession some companies have with "control" even if it's not in their best interest. On the point of "control," he notes:

There's this construct within large corporations, which is 'we control our brand!' And the moment anyone does anything unauthorized with it, we need to shut that down. Because brand control is paramount.

To counter this, he uses the example of Lucasfilm which has generally been supportive of fan-art and fan creations, saying that they really only get involved when significant profits are being made. Of course, that's not entirely true. We've seen a few cases where Lucasfilm and its lawyers go a little overboard with threats, but the general point makes sense.

To me the lesson is that you can't ever leave the interpretation of fair use to the corporations.

Oddly, the host of the show says that it's too late for that, though that's completely wrong, too. Companies don't get to define fair use. It's still in the law and determined by courts. It may not be clear enough, but it's certainly not determined by the copyright (or trademark) holders. The host also (again, oddly) claims that fair use is mostly based on a court case from 1982 (which one?!?) and that people fear to test it. While it is true that there is some fear over bringing fair use to the courts (it's expensive and still arbitrary), there have been an awful lot of fair use cases that have gone through the courts in recent years including some key victories in recent cases that have stood strongly in favor of fair use.

But then Savage makes the key point: which is that companies need to realize that fans doing stuff in support of their brand can be a really good thing:

The other thing is to make a qualifiable assessment of what the best business practices for them are. In so many corporations you end up with this battle between the PR department -- who really does understand how to reach out to the fans and put everyone under a nice umbrella -- and the legal department which wants nothing to do with them... and is somehow anti-the fans.... So wake up legal departments. We know that you guys work hard and are smart people. But you need to understand a little bit more about this before you send these nastygrams.

He also compares the whole thing to the Streisand Effect, and suggests that he's going to go on Etsy to buy an "illegal" Jayne hat.

Filed Under: adam savage, copyright, jayne hats, trademark

DailyDirt: Flying With The Greatest Of Ease

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The Segway was originally billed as a revolutionary new way to travel, but after it was revealed, it didn't seem anywhere near as cool as a flying car (or hoverboard). While everyone is more concerned about gas mileage nowadays, there are still some dreamers out there working on personal flying vehicles. Here are just a few examples of some ways to get yourself off the ground.

• Personal planes that can take off and land in water are almost ready to ship to their first 35 customers. Prototypes of these electric planes have been flown in successful test runs, and FlyNano expects to start production in the next year. [url]
• A personal helicopter is becoming a bit cheaper and more practical -- just imagine 4 or 5 toy quadcopters linked together with a chair in the middle. The volocopter VC1 is the first all-electric manned helicopter, and all those redundant rotors allow for a few to fail without causing too much trouble. [url]
• Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) tells everyone how to build their own hovercraft using a leaf blower, some duct tape and a 4 foot diameter circle of plywood. Warning: make sure you have enough gas in the leaf blower so you don't sink in the middle of a lake.... [url]

If you have some more free time, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: adam savage, flying car, hoverboard, hovercraft, mythbusters, personal mobility, transportation
Companies: flynano

Andy Samberg, Neil Gaiman, Trent Reznor, Aziz Ansari, Adam Savage & More Tell Congress: Don't Pass PIPA Or SOPA In Our Names

from the protecting-artists? dept

A group of some pretty damn famous people within the entertainment industry just made it clear that the folks pushing PIPA and SOPA do not represent their best interests. To hear the MPAA and the US Chamber of Commerce tell the story, they're pushing these bills in order to "protect artists." But more and more we're seeing the very artists they claim they're protecting say they want no part of these laws. The guys from The Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer), famous both for their YouTube videos and their work on NBC's Saturday Night Live, along with a number of other notable names in the entertainment industry -- including Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Trent Reznor, Aziz Ansari, Adam Savage, Damian Kulash (and the rest of OK GO), the band MGMT, and a bunch more -- have written a letter saying that, as internet users, they don't think these bills are a good idea:

We fear that the broad new enforcement powers provided under SOPA and PIPA could be easily abused against legitimate services like those upon which we depend. These bills would allow entire websites to be blocked without due process, causing collateral damage to the legitimate users of the same services - artists and creators like us who would be censored as a result.

We are deeply concerned that PIPA and SOPA’s impact on piracy will be negligible compared to the potential damage that would be caused to legitimate Internet services. Online piracy is harmful and it needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of censoring creativity, stifling innovation or preventing the creation of new, lawful digital distribution methods.

We urge Congress to exercise extreme caution and ensure that the free and open Internet, upon which so many artists rely to promote and distribute their work, does not become collateral damage in the process.

When even the very people that the entertainment industry insists its "protecting" with these bills are being quite vocal against them, you have to wonder why they're being pushed so hard? Once again, it seems that these bills aren't about protecting artists at all. They're about protecting the gatekeepers, who want to control those artists...

Filed Under: adam savage, amanda palmer, andy samberg, aziz ansari, neil gaiman, pipa, protect ip, sopa, trent reznor

MythBuster's Adam Savage: Why PROTECT IP & SOPA Could Destroy The Internet As We Know It

from the speak-up dept

One of the more interesting things that I've seen over the last few months as the SOPA/PIPA fight has become more involved, is that people I respect in the entertainment industry itself have been speaking out against the bill, and talking about how horrible it would be -- even though they work "in the industry." The latest is famed MythBuster's host Adam Savage, who recently admitted that he's a "serious copyright law geek" (in linking to Bill Patry's excellent new book, which I'll have a writeup on relatively soon). Savage is using his column space at Popular Mechanics to rip apart PIPA and SOPA, urging people to call their elected officials in protest of the bills, and noting that they "would be laughable if they weren't in fact real."

Think of all the stories you've read over the past 14 years of people slapping DMCA takedowns of content that they didn't own, just because they didn't like what it had to say. One that comes to mind is Uri Gellar, the popular psychic who performed spoon bending and other tricks on TV in the 1970s. Using a DMCA claim, he had YouTube pull videos of him being humiliated during a 1973 appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when he had no copyright claim to them at all.

This is exactly what will happen with Protect IP and SOPA. We've seen it again and again. Give people a club like this and you can kiss the Internet as you know it goodbye. It's really that bad. And it's a clear violation of our First Amendment right to free speech.

The Internet is probably the most important technological advancement of my lifetime. Its strength lies in its open architecture and its ability to allow a framework where all voices can be heard. Like the printing press before it (which states also tried to regulate, for centuries), it democratizes information, and thus it democratizes power. If we allow Congress to pass these draconian laws, we'll be joining nations like China and Iran in filtering what we allow people to see, do, and say on the Web.

Again, Savage is the kind of person that the industry is claiming needs this law -- and yet he's clearly vehemently against it. When you see the US Chamber of Commerce dump out their bogus line about "19 million jobs in IP-intensive industries," that includes Savage and all of his colleagues at MythBusters. How much longer will we let Tepp, the US Chamber of Commerce and the MPAA pretend that they represent the will of people who are actually very much against these bills and everything they represent?

Filed Under: adam savage, copyright, internet, internet freedom, protect ip, sopa

Mythbusters' Adam Savage Discovers Insane Roaming Fees: $11,000 iPhone Bill For A Few Hours Surfing

from the BUSTED dept

Every few months or so there's an article somewhere about an insane phone bill that someone gets because they took their phone out of the country without recognizing the insanity that is international roaming rates. This time, it appears to be Mythbusters co-host Adam Savage, who's been doing a bit of traveling lately. He was recently up in Canada, and used his iPhone to do a little web surfing. And now he got the bill. Apparently AT&T wants somewhere around $11,000 for Adam's surfing and have turned off his phone until he pays. Now there will be some who say that he should have read the fine print, but considering just how often these sorts of stories pop up, at some point it's worth noting that the fine print isn't working. And... even if you grant the "fine print" premise, it's hard for anyone to figure out how these international roaming rates make any sense whatsoever. They're so far off the charts as to be unbelievable.

Anyway... next week on Mythbusters... the insanity of mobile phone bills? Can we see Jamie and Adam try to decipher hidden fees, while Grant, Tory and Kari search for the elusive accurate mobile phone coverage map? Maybe Buster can figure out what the real limits are on unlimited data plans? Hmm... maybe not.

Filed Under: adam savage, data, international roaming, mythbusters, roaming, text messages
Companies: at&t

Texas Instruments Denies Adam Savage's Story About Killing RFID Mythbusters Episode

from the he-said,-she-said dept

In a followup to the story about credit card company lawyers killing an episode of Mythbusters concerning RFID vulnerabilities, Daniel Terdiman got a response from Texas Instruments, who had organized the call that Mythbusters host Adam Savage had described. TI's spokesperson tells a somewhat different story:

"In June 2007, MythBusters was interested in pursuing some great myth-busting ideas for RFID. While in pursuit, they contacted Texas Instruments' RFID Systems, who is a pioneer of RFID and contactless technology, for technical help and understanding of RFID in the contactless payments space," TI spokesperson Cindy Huff said. "Some of the information that was needed to pursue the program required further support from the contactless payment companies as they construct their own proprietary systems for security to protect their customers. To move the process along, Texas Instruments coordinated a conversation with Smart Card Alliance (SCA) who invited MasterCard and Visa, on contactless payments to help MythBusters get the right information. Of the handful of people on the call, there were mostly product managers and only one contactless payment company's legal counsel member. Technical questions were asked and answered and we were to wait for MythBusters to let us know when they were planning on showing the segment. A few weeks later, Texas Instruments was told by MythBusters that the storyline had changed and they were pursuing a different angle which did not require our help."

This bit of he-said/she-said could actually be true from both ends, with each side having a rather different perception of the call in question. The folks on the call may have been a bit combative over certain issues, and that resulted in Discovery producers getting worried about the episode and "changing the storyline." Either way, if what Huff says is true, is Texas Instruments willing to get the credit card companies to publicly agree that Mythbusters and Discovery should move forward on a story about RFID vulnerabilities? Update: Now Savage is backing down and saying he got the facts of the story wrong...

Filed Under: adam savage, mythbusters, rfid
Companies: texas instruments

Credit Card Companies Gagged Mythbusters Over RFID Vulnerabilities?

from the security-through-obscurity...-and-legal-threats dept

It's amazing to watch just how sensitive some companies are concerning the rather well-known security vulnerabilities associated with RFID tags and smart cards. We've seen time and time again, companies try to suppress such research from getting published -- and every single time, those efforts to suppress the publication of the vulnerabilities backfires, often badly.

But that never seems to stop companies from flexing their legal muscles.

The latest example comes to use via the Consumerist blog, who dug out a clip of Adam Savage from the TV show Mythbusters talking about what happened when the show tried to do an episode on RFID vulnerabilities:

Texas Instruments comes on along with chief legal counsel for American Express, Visa, Discover, and everybody else... They were way, way outgunned and they absolutely made it really clear to Discovery that they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down being a large corporation that depends upon the revenue of the advertisers. Now it's on Discovery's radar and they won't let us go near it.

Check out the video of him saying this (while admitting he's probably not supposed to talk about it) here: Perhaps it's an exaggeration by Savage, but do the credit card companies really think that security through obscurity (with a healthy dose of legal threats) is the best way to protect their customers?

Filed Under: adam savage, gagged, mythbusters, rfid, smart cards, vulnerabilities