Halloween in EQII

Well sure, there's Nights of the Dead or whatever, but here's some fun homage I mean IP infringement almost I mean homage. Hopefully the text flow is ok, but we have "Norm Baites" and we can also wonder how many licks it takes to get to the center of a… well just a lollipop.

The NSA and "Unreasonable"

The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments, as a package, minus two), ratified in 1791.

Perhaps the, or a, pivotal section relies upon the word "unreasonable":

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

Is it unreasonable to have the government have access to data that the giant info-companies already have access to and have in fact generated and searched through themselves? It certainly seems unparalleled, and I don't for the life of me see how it is actually legal, but given that other organizations have been doing this for years for their own good I have a bit of a hard time seeing how it is unreasonable to have some other people do the exactly the same thing as others while looking for terrorists instead of for their own capital gains.

People, especially at Wired Magazine, used to love to name-drop Bentham's panopticon back in the 1990s, but that idea hasn't been used much if at all in the recent dust up. Perhaps it seemed cool until it happened.

Edit: Last week's New Yorker lead article does mention Bentham, but since I was off at ICA in London I only saw it today. The article also astutely points out how we knew the NSA was doing this for years, and knew this years ago.

Comics and Copyright

Last Friday I was at the 2012 New York Comic Con with a Paul Belliveau, who is an animator. He knows an actual comic book artist, Chris Batista (who is cool enough to have a Wikipedia page), who has worked for Marvel and DC, from their time in school together. It was a lot like the Phoenix Comic Con from May, when ICA was in Phoenix, except that it was bigger and with fewer personalities (since Phoenix is so close to LA). The cosplay was awesome.

One thing I noted in Phoenix was all the artists who make their own artwork of Marvel and DC heroes, either rather awesomely or with their own differencing style. Although Marvel and DC are not people and did not make any of these characters, the two companies own the rights. How was this allowed? The answer is that it's expected and tolerated to a small extent.

The same was true in NYC: there were tons of artists with their own artwork that had Marvel and DC figures in it. But, for Chris Batista who had actually worked for Marvel and DC, it was a little different. He had actual layout pages (I am not sure of the exact term), that is, the large format black and white layout pages that he had drawn, and was offering them for sale (and they are for sale here at The Artist's Choice website). These are the original artwork before they are colored by the colorists.

There are a couple of things to keep track of here.

Copyright, in the US, is based on written law that specifically says... "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

"Work for hire", which most creative people are hired under these days, destroys a creator's right to copyright completely. Comic artists are hired under work for hire. Work for hire sucks.

The comic book that you get at a comic store is the creative work of many overlapping people. It may include writers, artists who work in black and white, and colorists, among others. Copyright and personal ownership rights here are not straightforward (sadly work for hire wipes all of these considerations away).

Yet, Chris has the right to sell this artwork (it's just the black and white, as you can see on the website). This is art that he made, and he owns it, yet Marvel or DC owns (or "owns") the characters. That makes my head spin a bit.

One interesting thing I got out of Phoenix was when I asked a fez making company about their fezzes, as some had a British police box on them, which happens to be the Tardis from Dr. Who. The person at the booth said they contacted the Dr. Who people, and they essentially said "As long as you call it 'a police box' we are very happy to have you do it all you like, since we don't own that -- if you call it 'the Tardis' then that gets into licensing and all that, and it's easier for all of us if that doesn't happen -- but, since no one owns the rights to the image of a British police box, you can use that all you like and don't need to ask permission of anyone, although we are really glad you asked and that you are fans."

So, I don't have a snazzy conclusion, but, there's all that.

Copyright Follies

A lot can be said, and a lot has been, about the horrible issues with how the legal regimes of countries (mostly the US) with major cultural production sectors are trying to maximize copyright and kill fair use, among other things. Here are two stories, one recent and one I was recently pointed to, that shed some light on the larger picture.

One is How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards, which is laughably horrible and all true.

The other is over at Granta, titled Life Among the Pirates, and is by Daniel Alarcón. It looks at book piracy in Peru, which is at a scale beyond what we have here in NYC for a variety of goods (like "Rolexes").

SOPA, PIPA, Benkler

SOPA and PIPA have made a lot of headlines lately, deservedly so, Luckily the White House stepped up and said Obama wouldn't sign either of these horribly misguided bills. (Edit: Or, apparently only SOPA is shelved?)

I'd like to quote Benkler, from his Wealth of Networks (2006), p. 2:

The rise of greater scope for individual and cooperative nonmarket pro- duction of information and culture, however, threatens the incumbents of the industrial information economy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in the midst of a battle over the institutional ecology of the digital environment. A wide range of laws and institutions— from broad areas like telecommunications, copyright, or international trade regulation, to minutiae like the rules for registering domain names or whether digital television receivers will be required by law to recognize a particular code—are being tugged and warped in efforts to tilt the playing field toward one way of doing things or the other. How these battles turn out over the next decade or so will likely have a significant effect on how we come to know what is going on in the world we occupy, and to what extent and in what forms we will be able—as autonomous individuals, as citizens, and as participants in cultures and communities—to affect how we and others see the world as it is and as it might be.

Spot-on. There are two other angles to the story, one, companies following the old business models that have always worked in the past and doing so until the company is run into the ground, and two, those with wealth and power both ignoring the law and bending the law to their will, making laws that benefit them.

Edit: MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito's take on the bills.

Copyright and... Whaaaat?

Sometimes you have to wonder about copyright. You read some odd little snippet about a copyright and have to wonder, what in the world is going on?

"The Bulldog Club of America (B.C.A.), which owns the copyright to the American standard..." (From the Sunday NYTimes magazine.)

What? Apparently "the standard" is just a written description, and written things do indeed fall under copyright: "the bulldog standard (a written template for the look and temperament of a breed)." But this isn't just a copyright of some written stuff, it's more than that, it's the definition of a breed of dogs (with horrible health problems) as recognized... well as recognized by people who recognize it.

Play and Homage (and IP Theft)

People like to play with the things they like. If we play with snippets of music, we are called pirates by the music industry. If we play with other cultural items, like TV and comic book characters, and if we do it in spaces like Spore or LittleBigPlanet, it's seen as acceptable (although I am sure it is a bit more complex than that, I don't have any insider info from EA or Sony about it).

What is interesting is when branches of the big intellectual property companies, like Sony (with Sony Music, and Sony's movie and television production), have spaces where intellectual property is borrowed by the company itself (although since companies are not people, obviously this is done by the people at the company). So Sony's EverQuest II has lots of cultural homages (or theft) in it, placed there by the people who work for Sony Online Entertainment. One "homage" is the epic (or something) questline for the swashbuckler character class, which is loosely but obviously based on the movie The Princess Bride. Swashies are pirates, right? And pirates are an important part of the film.

(Hmm actually I should, to be thorough, see if that's a Sony film -- but there are lots of examples in EQII that aren't owned by Sony, so even if this is not a good example the point still holds.)

Ok Wikipedia says it is not a Sony-owned piece of IP. It's Fox and Lions Gate and MGM. We are still on here with this example, good.

And this is found across companies and virtual spaces, so I was pleased but not too surprised upon some reflection to discover another Princess Bride reference in Bethesda's recent game Fallout: New Vegas (developed by Obsidian). In one cave you will discover big cave rats, but, they are not just big rats in a cave, they are rodents of unusual size. If you know The Princess Bride, you know there are rodents of unusual size in the fire swamps. It is possible this is done with permission, but I really doubt it. (That would also put a big dent in this argument.)

But, the whole point of this post is that I took a photo of it (since I play it on my Xbox 360, not on a PC where I could take screen shots and have mods, which would be cool).

(The "S" down at the bottom of the photo is light hitting the S in Sharp, the brand of television I have currently.)

''They'll read everything.''

So says Bruce Schneier, an author and chief security technology officer at British telecommunications operator BT in an article about the ongoing BlackBerry negotiations (I copied his job description from the article, to be clear, but if I put it in quotes it makes it look like the description is misleading). Specifically, he's referring to the Saudi government and the recent BlackBerry data dust-up. "They'll read everything."

And, as I noted, they probably already do read everything else. This still implies that the countries that aren't making a fuss are already reading all the RIM/BlackBerry data they want (and everything else), especially Western nations. The nations mentioned in the NYT article are:

• Saudi Arabia
• India
• The UAE
• Indonesia

So, one must assume that the US...

1. Gets all the data they want from RIM's BlackBerry service.
2. Doesn't share it with any of those above countries in a way they like.

Apparently there are already local servers, or deals for them, in Russia and China. The article says, "Schneier said the Saudi arrangement is similar to deals RIM has struck in Russia and China," which is not exactly clear if those have happened or will happen.

However, RIM "issued a statement last week denying it has given some governments access to BlackBerry data." So, it's not really clear. And, one can safely assume that some governments, like the US, don't actually ask in a way that RIM would have to refer to as "giving", perhaps it's more like "taking."

One also assumes that the US government would share anything important it discovers with the Saudi government if it were relevant (and vice-versa), so I don't see that terrorism is really an issue, and maybe various agencies aren't actually getting along as well as they should. Or, as mentioned in the article:

Critics maintain that Saudi Arabia and other countries are motivated at least partly by a desire to curb freedom of expression and strengthen already tight controls over the media.

Sadly the article does not actually name or interview any of these critics.

Addition: A better article, finally, from the NYT.

BlackBerryBlocking

In today's NYTimes, via the AP, Saudi Arabia to Block BlackBerry Messaging. The UAE, however, decided first and Saudi Arabia decided to do so as well, which makes for a rather odd headline. The UAE isn't instituting the ban until October 11, and why they are taking so long isn't addressed in the article at all. (Saudi Arabia will, maybe, block messages "later this month.") I assume they could do it tomorrow if they wanted. Is it more a case of posturing, to get some local control over BlackBerry messaging?

From the article:

Regulators say the devices operate outside of laws put in place after their introduction in the country, and that the lack of compliance with local laws raises ''judicial, social and national security concerns for the UAE.''

However,

Regulators said they have sought compromises with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion on their concerns, but failed to reach an agreement on the issue.

Sounds like strong-arming. Why is this needed, and why only with BlackBerry?

Unlike many other smart phones, BlackBerry devices use a system that updates a user's inbox by sending encrypted messages through company servers abroad, including RIM's home nation of Canada.

Users like the system because it is seen as more secure, but it also makes BlackBerry messages far harder to monitor than ones sent through domestic servers that authorities could tap into, analysts say.

Ah, the surveillance society! I would assume the US already intercepts and decrypts all the BlackBerry info. Apparently we aren't sharing enough with the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

Addition: What this strongly implies, if not outright makes clear (ok it's clear, they just don't say it) is that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are already scanning/reading/monitoring/intercepting all the traffic they want on other phone devices.

The NYT decided their own writeup would be better than the thin AP wire feed, so they have an article up.

Researcher-Client Privilege

I was reading Gang Leader for a Day by Suhdir Venkatesh, which is riveting (although he constantly comes off as unbelievably naive, you don't get a good sense of the years passing, and all the fuss over how dealing drugs is a business that runs like any other seems foolish, business is business).

But, some sentences from page 186 bothered me:

There was no such thing as "researcher-client confidentiality," akin to the privilege conferred upon lawyers, doctors, or priests.... While some states offer so-called shield laws that allow journalists to protect their confidential sources, no such protection exists for academic researchers.

And I ask, why not?

Lawyers have a JD, academics (usually) have a PhD. Physicians have an MD, we who are also doctors (but not physicians) have a PhD. D, D, D! Physicians try to cure the woes of individuals and also groups of individuals, we PhDs, especially social scientists, try to heal the woes of society as well. Like journalists, we may need to investigate and study the unsavory or illegal.

Lessig on Copyright and Balance

Yes, one of my favorite topics, but lawyers are pretty good sources to listen to when it comes to copyright laws. The video is the PPT, so starts off blank (it's working, don't worry).

Lessig discusses balance and different situations where copyright is used. Accessible and enlightening as always. From blip.tv, embedded below. Via boingboing. About an hour long.

Rights and Wrongs

Okay that's an overused perhaps too-easy pun, but relevant in this case. And what is this case? Danger Mouse's Grey Album. Yes, an old story, I know, but check out the EFF summary page. Here's the part that blows my mind:

First, it's important to understand that there are at least 4, and maybe 5, "rights-holders" potentially involved:

1. Owners of the rights to the sound recording ("master") for the Beatles' White Album. That's EMI.
   
2. Owners of the rights to the musical works (songs or "compositions") that appear on the Beatles' White Album. For the Lennon and McCartney songs, that appears to be Sony Music/ATV Publishing, a joint venture between Michael Jackson and Sony. It's unclear who owns the rights to the George Harrison songs.
   
3. Owners of the rights to the sound recording for Jay-Z's Black Album.
   
4. Owners of the rights to the musical works that appear on Jay-Z's Black Album.
   
5. And, possibly, the owner of the rights to the Grey Album (presumably DJ Danger Mouse).
   

Rights to the sound recordings and to the musical works are different? Are you kidding me? I'm not even sure what the difference between the "master" and the "compositions" are! Copyright law is totally out of control. And it's unclear who owns the rights to the George Harrison songs? Ok honestly I understand how that can be, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Horrible.

Hitler DMCA Meme

I will not pretend to be a master of "the Hitler meme" from the movie Downfall, although I have seen a few. This one, from the EFF, is absolutely amazing. You must watch it. All of it. 

There are many amazing lines, here are two:

Screw them. If they don't run Windows, who cares?

and

Those YouTube people are pussies.

The video is, of course, posted on YouTube...

The Battle Over Language

So, Fox is still in a kurfuffle over the money they might have lost with those Wolverine downloads. 

From The Hollywood Reporter: 

"Piracy is a serious issue for us. We now estimate that there are above 4 million downloads of that stolen 'Wolverine' movie that was up there," News Corp. COO Peter Chernin told Wall Street analysts on Wednesday.

Notice he says "stolen". This is inaccurate, as Fox still has the movie, it was not stolen from them. It was copied. Fox still has as much of the movie as it had before, all of it. Nothing is missing. Although Chernin makes a financial assessment, it is not at all like theft from a bank where actual physical goods ($) are taken from the bank and the bank no longer has those goods in its possession. 

This... is hegemony! What a great word. It is the battle over ideas, if you accept that intellectual property is exactly the same as physical property, then you are thinking what they want you to think.

A.P. Still in 1999

So, the A.P. has a YouTube channel with its content, but apparently some people at the A.P. don't understand what YouTube is. If this were 1999, it would be funny.

Old Media + New Tech = Disruption!

Newspapers are all after Google for including snippets of their news, or something. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The Author's Guild is all over Amazon for text-to-speech in the Kindle. 

Reminds me of, well, everything. The radio powers (initially AM) suppressing FM technology (which was better) so as to protect their AM investments. The TV establishment fighting cable TV and the VCR until they could profit from them (I cannot resist the "Boston Strangler!" comment, who can, it is perfect). Newspapers hating the internet. Oh wait that's where we still are!

Established powers like the status quo, it's what sustains them, even if they draw on a formerly disruptive technology. They always seek to stop challenges in any way possible, and when consumers make it very clear they would use something new, the established powers seek to destroy it, often legally. Eventually if they can they co-opt the new technology, but that doesn't always happen. 

Challenge is opportunity. Embrace it (but not like an anaconda would).

DMCA Fail

From "Google submission hammers section 92A", by Ted Gibbons, for New Zealand PCWorld:

Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

You see what's wrong with that, right? The 57% doesn't bother me so much, but only if the claims are valid. The 37% is horrible. I could go on to explain why, but I'll let the EFF explain the DMCA.

The Subversive Internet

Two very exciting posts (no, articles) about the Internet over at the NYT. One is about a Saudi woman who posted a video of herself driving on a public road to YouTube. As you know, that is currently illegal in Saudi Arabia. (I do not know why it is illegal, seems like straightforward old oppression of women.) The other is about the dreaded Chinese grass-mud horse.

Not bad for a mythical creature whose name, in Chinese, sounds very much like an especially vile obscenity. Which is precisely the point.

Although the large amount of spam found hourly in my spam folder (go, Google filtering!) attests, sadly, to the dimmer side of human nature (notice I did not say "to the dimmer side of the technology"), these two examples are exciting because they show some of the potential for the anti-authoritarian subversive uses of the Internet. Now of course if you are a Chinese filterer, or a Saudi official, you might disagree, but then you could go write your own blog about it. This blog is mine.

I especially like the Saudi driving, because the Internet can act as a medium to slowly introduce and maintain a conversation about the issue, bringing it into the mainstream. Even if it is disagreeable to many, just having it more widely covered is a step. Change often takes time.

Copyrights and Copyleftalones

A good article I think you should read over at TidBITS about Google Book Search and the legal dealings there. Discusses copyright, orphaned works, fair use, and a lot of things everyone should know about. If you're a human being, you need to know these things! Or if you're an Internet user. I bet you are.

DRM - Dummies Rule Media

DRM is a horrible, horrible thing, and even though it's been pointed out again and again, companies still use it (are the DRM peddlers FUDsters?).

Penny Arcade has a nice three-parter on DRM, although part three is best (part one, part two). Of course there are the accompanying comics (one, two, three). 

You should of course read Cory Doctorow's Microsoft talk about DRM (or maybe watch the video).

The Machinist at Salon has a nice write-up of the dust-up over the Spore DRM. Omg it installed SecuROM on my Mac?!?! Not acceptable! Well I guess I have to find out how to remove it now...

Don't forget the Sony rootkit fiasco either. Wikipedia's external links for the article may be better, there is one for BoingBoing and one for Groklaw.

Oh and, a late add, XKCD's recent take on it. Pretty accurate and concise.