©ollectanea

Bill Patry reports on an interesting, if somewhat esoteric dispute taking place in Spain: The Patry Copyright Blog: Calatrava, Bridges, and Moral Rights. Visit his blog and click on the link to Calatrava's bridge -- incredible art by almost anyone's definition (although I'm convinced that there is nothing that can't be defined by someone as art these days, thus the utility of the definition is nil, but that's a discussion that *never* goes anywhere). Anyway, the interesting thing about the Bilbao dispute is that architectural works, and a bridge is an architectural work (and may also be art...), are protected in Portugal like sculptures and paintings. Artists and designers have moral rights in bridges. Thus, the architect of this bridge, Calatrava, can sue the city of Bilbao for what it does to the bridge, even in the name of pedestrian safety or convenience. His rights extend to preserving his vision of the bridge, or so he claims.

U.S. law also protects architectural works, but as Patry notes, bridges were excluded from the scope of the U.S. provision (along with photographs taken from publicly accessible viewing locales). So, here we have an example of U.S. law still being narrower than European law.

This issue of the comparative scope of various country's laws is of special interest to me because of the University of Texas Libraries' participation in the Google Book Search project as a library partner. We have started on a wonderful project to identify which of the scanned works are in the public domain, in addition to those that Google's public domain algorithm identifies as in the public domain (a very conservative estimate). In the US, we treat foreign works as having the term of copyright that our own works have, for older works that is typically 95 years from the date of publication (yes, yes, it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's not the point of this particular post so I'll spare us all). But the works we put online here in the U.S. are pulled up by people in other countries. If the copyright term is longer there where the work is pulled up, is that a problem?

We are finding that the term is really pretty long in many of the countries where works from our Benson Latin American Collection were published: Brazil's term is life of the author plus 80 years; Mexico is life of the author plus 100 (!!!) years. Ninety-five years from the date of publication seems like an eternity to me, but it pales in comparison to life of the author plus 100. Aside from the interesting questions raised by the jurisdictional issue (which country's laws apply to works placed on the Internet), I find it interesting that we actually have a more modest sweep to our protection than some countries. And I am happy for the authors whose works will be sooner re-introduced to the world as a result. Many of these older works have been completely forgotten about over the century since their publication even though they may speak directly to questions that we raise today.

Thanks for the introduction, Georgia, and, more importantly, the opportunity to be your guest blogger this month. I can think of no better (or should I say challenging) introduction to the world of blogging than learning it through one of my favorite people (Georgia) on one of my favorite topics (copyright). Yes(!) - there it is - the admission - novice blogger! I've been resisting learning how to blog to some extent because I wasn't sure my overloaded brain (or schedule) could stand another new technology. But I guess you have to keep up or get out of the way.

Georgia also showed me how to get a Google reader and RSS feeds and even some good sites to watch. Annddd, as if that weren't enough, she even suggested this news story as an important and appropriate one to bring to the attention of this blog. Now that's what I call a good friend (although I suspect the rest of the month is up to me). So I'm counting on this being a friendly blog community and hoping you all will help me this month by popping in with your comments and stories -

Georgia was right (a habit of hers) - the news story she pointed me to was fascinating, important, and layered in its implications that become increasingly scary the longer you think about it.

It's called "Music Publisher's Takedown Strikes The Wrong Chord" and Michael Geist wrote it last week. It's one of those David and Goliath internet stories but David dies. However, there's a twist. It turns out that David was really Atlas holding up the world and when he fell, the world fell. How's that for mixing metaphors and drama?

It's about a non-commerical website started in 2006 by a part-time Canadian student as an online library of public domain music scores. It was called the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) and by last month it was the largest of its kind on the internet with a million hits a day. Unfortunately, it was taken down by the student October 19th after he was threatened with an infringement lawsuit from an Austrian music publisher called Universal Edition. They wanted the site blocked from EU users and nothing up that was still under copyright in Europe (Europe's copyright term is twenty years longer than Canada's). Everything on the site was in the public domain in Canada so the site was perfectly legal as a Canadian based site.
How sad. The public domain really took a hit on this one. It's bad enough when "arguably" legal sites get bullied out of existence but things have really deteriorated when a lawful site goes down. In fact, it's outrageous.

The notion that "public domain" might be only an off-line concept (see Geist story) is also chilling but I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. After all, the oft-repeated statement that fair use doesn't apply in the digital world has been trotted out for years. Apparently copyright is only medium-neutral when it meets the needs of the copyright holders.

I agree with Geist when he notes that if Universal Edition is right, we (including online businesses) would have to comply with all the laws of all countries. In this case, there's only a difference of 20 years term being disputed. But is that the only difference between Austrian and Canadian copyright law? If one is expected to comply with Austrian copyright term length, wouldn't it follow that one would have to comply with the rest of it? US copyright law is challenging enough for me.

In the end, I'm left with the feeling that we haven't figured out how to make a forceful and compelling case for the necessary growth and health of the public domain. We need an approach that makes Joe Citizen feel like a rich and thriving public domain is something we believe we're entitled to - like national parks - that needs protection and care and is there for everyone to use and enjoy.

Lessig' gave a talk about remix culture back in March at TED: How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law. His talk was just posted this month. For anyone who has seen him give a talk in the last 1 - 2 years, this won't be new, but it's very streamlined and very succinct. The video only runs about 18 minutes and it's excellent -- watch this!

Lessig emphasizes the importance of competition, that "more free" can compete with "less free," that artists' choice (to distribute differently, for example, to make their own works more freely available) is the key to defeating monopoly, and that laws that criminalize our children's creativity are corrosive -- and we can do better.

I have been developing an argument that touches on these same themes at Mass digitization ~ changing copyright law and policy, and in fact I had just posted this new segment last weekend that talks about how the sheer availability of so much good free content online inevitably puts pressure on even Hollywood and the music industries to stop making it hard for people to get to their content (DRM and subscription barriers, among others). Check it out.

I have completed the update to and move of the Copyright Crash Course! (Well, it is never complete, but we have to draw the line somewhere.)

It now resides with me at the University of Texas at Austin on the Libraries' Website (instead of the UT System Website). I had the benefit of most of the summer to revise the pages, and the able services of a Libraries designer, Matthew Villalobos, to give the site a much-needed design boost. I spent the last 6 weeks loading content into the templates and debugging. That part is not so much fun...

I changed the focus of the Crash Course in some respects. My new job at the Libraries focuses my efforts more on the needs of faculty members as scholars and their challenges of working and succeeding in a networked academic world. So, I have tailored the Crash Course more to the needs of faculty and researchers, though the site still contains some articles that speak to students. The Crash Course also continues to include the "Copyright in the Library" series, which I have updated entirely.

The old site is still up and will continue to be for a short while. When it is taken down and archived, the old pages will be replaced with "404" pages that direct visitors to the new site.

Feel free to let me know if you have comments or questions about the new material. If you find bugs, I would especially appreciate your letting me know.

Lessig announced today that Carl Malamud had accomplished a coup: Building the Legal Commons (Lessig Blog). He purchased a huge collection of federal case reports and is making them completely pd -- not just CC licensed for some but not all purposes, but CC licensed for *all* purposes through a new CC license that commits the licensed work to the public domain. I feel like I'm watching one of those amazing movie final scenes where people who have been stunned into submission over the course of the entire movie, one-by-one stand up and finally refuse to go along with atrocity anymore. They just say no. Or, rather, they just say yes -- yes to the protection and promotion of the public domain, not just for some, but for all.

Tears and cheers (the audience is reacting).

In the last week or so I have been reading about the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 that now contains a provision that would "require all institutions eligible for financial aid under Title IV to develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or P2P distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity." EDUCAUSE Talking points. Also in their talking points, EDUCAUSE states that this practice "could represent a transfer of over $400 million annually from higher education to the entertainment industry while raising the cost of higher education."

I have heard various quotes about how small a part of the overall file-sharing problem is represented by college students. The lion's share of the problem is off-campus, in the "grown-up", world on commercial internets. Why don't we hear legislation pertaining to them? Why focus on such a small part of the problem? Why ignore the elephant in the room? Why sue a 13-year old girl for crying out loud!?!

At my university, (one of the 25 named bad guys) efforts to inform students about the illegalities of most of their P2P file-trading activities are pretty extensive (comparatively speaking; also consume lots of worker's time and energy), yet it's hard to judge how effective they are. Even though we still allegedly have a lot of activity, would we have more without our efforts?

Although it is inarguably part of the university's role to urge their students to comply with the law, behave in ethical manners, and teach that by example, we are only their teachers.

We are not their parents and we are not the police. We had no role in instilling or molding their characters or their ethical or religious belief system. In fact, we didn't even teach them the computer skills necessary to accomplish P2P sharing. They came to us with these behaviors and skills fully set and continually reinforced by their peers.

So when did we become responsible (in a legal and money sense) for the students P2P file sharing? If a student uses dormitory phones to conduct drug deals or extortion, is the university responsible? Should phone access be terminated? What if our students steal cable TV service" Should Congress pass a bill that withholds federal funding from our schools until the cable TV companies are financially satisfied? Since when did higher education become responsible for the profit margin of the entertainment industry?

After 6 weeks of drafting, posting, tracking blog statistics, and weekly writing in a journal about the experience, I have just completed my blogging experiment at Mass digitization ~ Changing copyright law and policy, by posting the Conclusion today. Here's the first paragraph:

The story of mass digitization’s effect on copyright law and policy is the story of confronting and eventually calming fears. Sometimes the only way to calm fears is just to stand up, stride towards the light switch, and show that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Turn on the light. Look under the bed. Open the closet door. See? There’s nothing there. Didn’t Franklin Roosevelt say something about this?

Since I announced the start of the experiment here on Collectanea, I thought I would announce its conclusion as well. If you haven't visited yet, or if you visited early in the drafting process, you might like to visit again to read the entire draft (7 fairly short sections). Be sure to check out the Project Resources page. It has links to all the online materials referred to in the draft, and other materials that support or illustrate the argument.

It has been a very interesting experience to draft in blog-style. My next step will be to polish the draft and give it journal-style. I will be able to compare the two drafts and perhaps say something useful about how the styles differ. I also have skads of data about daily page views, time on the pages, and how many pages were viewed per visit. It's amazing what Google Analytics can tell you about your blog. If it weren't for Google Analytics in fact (and other blog statistics programs), the story we would relate about our experiences blogging would be far removed from the truth because without stats, we only know readers are there if they comment. Hardly *anyone* comments though. The comment rate on Mass Digitization was roughly .2% -- that's point two percent, not two percent. So, for 1000 pages viewed, the blog received 2 comments. This rate is consistent with rates I've read in broad studies of blogs. Of course, there are exceptions, but most of us are not really visibly building a community of commenters.

But we are reaching people. Those 1000 pages viewed represent about 500+ people who stopped by, even if only for a few minutes. So, the blog entries did get viewed in whole or in part by many folks who might not read the article in its polished journal-style form. It is an interesting hypothesis, how blogs affect scholarship. I will be posting my paper on that subject at the Crash Course when I complete the paper in about 2 weeks. And Mass Digitization will be published on CIP's Website in the spring.

If you are one of those 500+ people, THANK YOU! It is very nice to know you are there --

As I mentioned in an earlier post ("Shooting Fish In a Barrel"), my university was one of the 25 named bad guys receiving letters about online piracy. My earlier blog was about the College Opportunity and Affordability Act winding its way through the legislative system. Among other things this act speaks to is requiring universities to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent illegal activity.

One such nifty "technology based deterrent is the "University Toolkit"
being offered (FOR FREE, can you imagine?) by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Not being a "techie", I can get left behind fairly easily on these things and I can also get spooked about privacy invasions with almost no effort at all. (My first reaction to things like On-Star was not 'Great - someone somewhere in the ether can unlock my car for me' but rather 'Good grief, someone knows where I am all the time'.)

Anyway, when I read the Washington Post's Security Fix blog by Brian Krebs titled "MPAA University 'Toolkit' Raises Privacy Concerns" where detailed explanations of the Toolkit are discussed, I was horrified. (this is a blog so I figure I can say things like "horrified" and "yikes")

Apparently, installing the Toolkit on your university's network is like letting the fox into the henhouse. Once installed, the software phones home to the MPAA telling them that it is 'in' and checking for a new version (and who knows what's in that). According to Security Fix, "installing and using the MPAA tool in its default configuration could expose to the entire Internet all of the traffic flowing across the school's network" automatically configuring "all of the data and graphs gathered about activity on the local network to be displayed on a Web page complete with ntop generated graphics showing not only bandwidth usage generated by each user on the network, but also the Internet address of every Web site each user has visited."

Does this bother you? Bothers me. Bothers Steve Worona (director of policy and networking programs at EDUCAUSE) who opined that "no university network administrator in their right mind would install this toolkit on their networks."

In response to these criticism, the MPAA, via Craig Winter, deputy director for Internet enforcement (does that sound like web cop to you?) said the toolkit was in the 'beta' phase. Again, no technology expert here, but why would you release and promote something not finished?

Rather than continue to repeat this informative blog entry by Krebs, I would encourage you to read it yourself, as well as some of the follow-up comments.

When I consider how some of these associations are treating their customer base, the saying about killing the goose that lays the golden egg comes to mind. I laughed out loud the other day when I heard someone say on the radio (completely different context; can't remember who or I'd credit) "We don't want to kill the golden goose; we just want to strangle it until it gives us all its eggs."