Intellectual Property

The NYTimes discusses the recent ruling in the case of Martha Graham's heir, Ronald Protas. The Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance believes that when she sold her school to the Center that it became its employee -- and has the right to her body of work.

"This is definitely a success problem," Charles Reinhart, the director of the American Dance Festival, said in an interview. "These problems would never have existed 50 years ago, because the concept of a penny being made by a choreographer or from a dance was unheard of. So now that the commercial aspect of making money has prevailed in this nonprofit world of dance, and the valuable asset is the dance itself — hey, that's a success story. Now we've got to straighten it out and make sure we keep that value with the creator, the choreographer."

Gary Deane writes about another weigh- in on music downloading.

David Dillard writes "A Slashdot post about current activity in Congress regarding legislation for database protection served as a spring board for a
substantial NetGold post about database
protection legislation discussion and document sources that have been produced over a period of time.

Here is a sampling of the links found in the
NetGold message about database protection legislation:

An anonymous patron pointed out this New York Times Magazine Column "The Ethicist" (second entry) about sharing library database passwords. In this case a university library user's password was offered a non-enrolled high school sibling. The Ethicist concludes that each "user must pay his or her fair share." Most university library database contracts provide for public access from within the library, however. This issue also comes up with serving non-affiliated users via consortial virtual reference systems.

Slashdot points to This Reuters article that says Lawmakers in the House of Representatives are circulating a proposed bill that would prevent wholesale copying of school guides, news archives and other databases which do not enjoy copyright protection.

The proposed bill would provide a legal umbrella for publishers of factual information, such as courtroom decisions and professional directories, similar to the copyright laws that protect music, novels and other creative works.

"Information, when not copyrighted, is something that can be shared. Once you start putting fences around information ... there's no freedom of inquiry, That doesn't make us smarter, it makes us dumber."

There aren't any blogs yet at Copywrongs.org, but it's any interesting concept.

"Copywrongs.org is a clearinghouse and connection point for individuals who are the subjects of P2P-related copyright enforcement actions, and a place for the public to learn first-hand about what's going on. Our first project is to offer blogs to all who have been subjected to digital copyright enforcement actions, particularly those who have been caught in the avalanche of RIAA music-trading subpoenas that began in July."

Yet another example from the topsy-turvy world of copyright, where emulating your pop culture heros gets you slapped with a law suit.

"A Madness tribute band has been told to pay £500 for copying the original group's famous walk during concerts.

On top of that, Ultimate Madness also faces having to pay a further £100 any time it uses the 20-second dance in future performances.""

Here's the full story.
[via Peter]

Public Knowledge, Creative Commons, and The Center for the Study of the Public Domain are collaborating on a public-education campaign that will highlight the struggles of creators with intellectual property law. They are collecting stories of citizens who are hampered by restrictive intellectual property laws. If you have a personal story of copyright, trademark or patent laws needlessly hindering your work and ideas, they want to hear from you. Conversely, if your work has benefited from the availability of art and information in the public domain, they want to know about it.

Not sure Why the Public Domain Matters?

Jonathan Zittrain, Assistant Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, has written The Copyright Cage an article that looks at copyright law.
He says almost all those who study and write about the law of cyberspace agree that copyright law is a big mess. He adds it's time for us to wise up and to redraw copyright's boundaries so that the law and reasonable public expectations fall into better alignment with one another.Via Slashdot.

Here's a quick but interesting little piece from the recent New Yorker.
Here's an extended quote to pique your interest:

Innovators came up with new ways of selling products, handling suppliers, running organizations, or managing information. If the ideas were good, the innovators got rich, but they also got imitated, which made them less rich than they might have been. It was great for everyone else, though. The competition lowered prices and increased quality; the new ideas spread and were improved upon. The mail-order catalogue, the moving assembly line, the decentralized corporation, the frequent-flier mile, the category-killer store—none of these radical ideas were patented.

Those were the days. Now the first thing someone with a good notion does is press the government to protect it. Priceline patented its reverse-auction method for selling cut-rate airline tickets. I.B.M. patented a method for keeping track of people waiting in line for the bathroom.

The article has a tone and slant that many of us will appreciate. It places emphasis on the fact that the ownership of information and ideas isn't beneficial to the majority. It doesn't, however, go so far as to mention how our current economic system is quite distant to laissez faire Capitalism (and more like Corporate Socialism) becasue of copyright, IP, and other issues. /my opinion

Here's the article.

Some not so Encouraging News out of Canada, where The bill to amalgamate the National Archives and the Library of Canada moved one step closer to law last week -- complete with controversial proposed changes to the Copyright Act that would extend copyright protection for unpublished works for as long as 42 years after death.
They say what was supposed to be a simple housekeeping bill could turn into a political nightmare for the Liberals when the House resumes next fall now that committee members from both government and opposition sides of the table are claiming that Parliamentary Secretary Carole-Marie Allard (Laval East, Que.) broke a promise to remove the contentious copyright changes at clause-by-clause reading.

Tim Wu, writer over over at Slate takes on the aggressive worldwide legal campaign against the unauthorized Potter takeoffs in This Article.
It began last year when Rowling and Time-Warner threatened the publishers of Chinese Potter, who agreed to stop publication. On April 4 of this year, Rowling persuaded a Dutch court to block the import of Tanya Grotter to Holland. Harry Potter in Calcutta, in which Harry meets up with various characters from Bengali literature, was recently pulled by its Indian publisher under threat. Potter takeoffs have become international contraband.

Anne Karle-Zenith writes "Check It Out!

Bravo to Representatives Lofgren and Doolittle from California, who introduced this bill yesterday. This is an important issue that more information professionals need to be aware of and hopefully, get involved with. As a former music business employee, I am only too aware of how powerful copyright holders are on Capital Hill. This is our chance to speak out. I encourage everyone on this list to read up on this issue, sign the petition and write to your Representatives in support of this bill! "

Info-Commons.org has Why We Must Talk About The Information Commons, by David Bollier.
He says public libraries have a special role to play in the battles to preserve and extend the public domain in the digital age. But many other groups also require open access to information and creativity and the ability to share, quote and build upon the achievements of the past.

SomeOne writes "The tv columnist at the Globe and Mail describes "The Docket." It's a Canadian show that helps explain the law to laypeople. Tonight's show is about copyright. (repeats Saturday)

"Tonight's program is called Copyright Confusion and it explains the plain facts about tangled copyright law. It's very useful for anyone, but it pays particular attention to issues of copyright that affect children copying material in a library or from the Internet. This is all extremely timely. Anybody who writes, performs or creates anything for a living knows that most people are completely ignorant about copyright law and have the impression that they can steal other people's work without payment or penalty."

The Globe And Mail Has More "

Lee Hadden writes "The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about international
copyright issues. See the June 16, 2003 issue for: "Author Fights Tactics
Of 'Bollywood' Studios" By JOANNA SLATER
BOMBAY -- When British author Barbara Taylor Bradford suddenly
started getting mail from fans in India this spring, she was perplexed. One
admirer was thrilled that Ms. Bradford's best-selling novel, "A Woman of
Substance," would soon be on the air in India -- as a 262-part television
series. That was news to the author, who hadn't given permission for any
such project.
Now, Ms. Bradford is determined to stop India's entertainment
industry, called Bollywood, from making money off her ideas. "I created
these things, someone else didn't," she says. "It's not fair."
Ms. Bradford's decision to fight copyright infringement in Indian
courts is sending chills through Bollywood, which has a habit of borrowing
ideas.

"

Steve Fesenmaier writes "Last summer one of the worst disasters in post-WWII librarianship took place at the Hennepin County Library - Charles Brown decided to end using the Berman/Freedman Bibliographic Database founded by current ALA prez Mitch Freedman and built by HCL head cataloger Sandy Berman and his staff. I started a petition to save it. Subsequently HCL and the University of Illinois recently signed the legal documents that provides access to the database to the public thru the ALA Archives housed at UI.

Copyright holders like record labels have too much power over what people do with songs, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson, This BBC Story.After failing to persuade an appeals court of its case, US ISP Verizon is handing over the names of four of its customers to the lawyers at the Recording Industry Association of America.

The disclosure marks a significant shift in the way that customer privacy is dealt with in US law and will, as with many aspects of the regulation of the internet, have an impact on net users around the world.

Troy Johnson writes "There has been a documentary created about illegal copyright infringement. The documentary is called "Willfull Infringement". At the website for the documentary you can buy the DVD and also see a free clip of the movie. For librarians interested in intellectual property issues this is an absolute must see.You can view it at

willfulinfringement.com "

Bob Cox writes "Boston.com Reports A unanimous Supreme Court cleared the way for companies to sell copies of movies or television programs on which copyright has expired without giving credit to the creator of the idea on which the originals were based.
Ruling in a case involving visual adaptations of Dwight D. Eisenhower's book about World War II, ''Crusade in Europe,'' the court said ''figuring out who is in the line of origin would be no simple task.''
"