Index of category copyright

News on the Eastern Front

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:04:12 GMT

It recently hit Anime News Network that the Japanese government was asking the US government to crack down on illegal distribution of anime. As usual, fans on the ANN Web-BBS thread attempted to make plenty of excuses for why this item should be discounted or ignored, usually attempting to draw distinctions that the law (and the request) doesn't. For instance, some attempted to draw the usual bogus line between "legal" fansubs of unlicensed material, and fansubs of licensed material; someone else wanted to know whether the request included "raws" or just fansubs; and some said it wasn't anime, just copyrighted material in general (even though the request specifically mentioned anime, and no other form of Japanese IP is routinely infringed on anything like a comparable scale). Those distinctions matter to fans. Those distinctions don't matter to the bureaucracy, which only sees copyrights and infringement. It's similar to the attempts fans of underage-sex fantasies routinely make to draw a line between themselves and the "actual perverts" who are completely different in some way not instantly obvious to outsiders. [635 words...]

ZDNet on lyrics sites

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:35:05 GMT

Here's an item on a songwriter's attempts to fight online lyrics sites. Unfortunately, it's mostly about him trying to get Google to punish such sites through its position as search engine and advertising provider, which of course is a stupid approach. Even if Google were willing to assume responsibility for enforcing copyrights on the entire world like that, it wouldn't be a good idea and nobody should be asking for that. But although the article is about a stupid campaign, I'm linking to it anyway to highlight something of current interest: the people using those lyrics sites, and often even the people who operate them, don't realize that tension exists between copyright and what they're doing. They depend, as a matter of course without even thinking about it, on excuses like "we're non-profit (even if we sell ads)!" or "this is fair use!" or other, even flimsier, excuses. They're sitting ducks for any copyright holder who cares to issue a DMCA notice. It's another example of the assumption that copyright law is about literal satisfaction of technical criteria rather than having boundaries that actually matter in a real way. [430 words...]

Thoughts on Thoughts on Music

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:35:20 GMT

All the cool kids are talking about Thoughts on Music, an open letter posted under Steve Jobs's byline on the Apple Web site. In it, he claims that iTunes uses DRM because the major music labels demanded it, that it would be really cool for everyone if they weren't forced to use DRM by the major labels, and so the major labels ought to stop demanding it. I have a few semi-random thoughts. [1300 words...]

Anime music music

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:42:06 GMT

I've written before about anime music videos (AMVs), and so has Lawrence Lessig. They're a good example of what the creative commons is supposed to be about: new artistic work created through the use of existing artistic work, and in a way that would be impossible without easy DRM-free access to existing artistic work. If you haven't already, you should fill out the Annanberg Center for Communication survey on AMVs; see also my comments on legal threats and a takedown order stemming from this activity's illegal nature. Anyway, today's topic is that people are doing the same thing with music from anime series. I spotted Nekomimi Music in a Project Wonderful auction - and you know me, I'm all about the nekomimi - and found links from there to animeremix.org, which seems to be the animemusicvideos.org of audio. [371 words...]

Recipe copyright: not such a tasty idea

Sat, 14 Oct 2006 13:25:11 GMT

Here's an article from Food and Wine about the trend towards attempting to attach patent and copyright restrictions to restaurant food. According to the article, cooks are not at all convinced that such restrictions are a good idea. So if the food geeks, for whom written-down ideas and fixed expressions are only a small part of the big picture, can recognize that intellectual property is at best a mixed blessing and pretty often a bad idea entirely; then why can't we technology geeks, for whom written-down ideas and fixed expressions are pretty much the whole picture, see the same thing? [376 words...]