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copyright

Copyright gets Dumber

April 14, 2012 18:39:30.449

It's not limited to the US - witness Canada Post:

Canada Post has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Geolytica, which operates GeoCoder.ca, a website that provides several geocoding services including free access to a crowdsourced compiled database of Canadian postal codes. Canada Post argues that it is the exclusive copyright holder of all Canadian postal codes and claims that GeoCoder appropriated the database and made unauthorized reproductions.

The company in question crowdsourced the postal codes, but either way - how can a set of postal codes be copyrighted? I'll say it again - abolishing copyright completely would be an improvement over what we have now. It's hardly the best solution, but it does tell you just how bad I think things are now...

posted by James Robertson

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Destroy the Internet to Save the Internet

April 11, 2012 8:34:54.148

The MPAA is back to their tried and true approach - if we just destroyed the internet, everything would be fine. Here they are arguing that embedding copyrighted content should be as big a violation as hosting it. There's a problem with both theories, but first, here they are:

"Although there is nothing inherently insidious about embedded links, this technique is very commonly used to operate infringing internet video sites," the organization writes. "Pirate sites can offer extensive libraries of popular copyrighted content without any hosting costs to store content, bandwidth costs to deliver the content, and of course licensing costs to legitimately acquire the content." The MPAA also notes that embedding can enable sites to monetize infringing content by surrounding it with ads.

Let's walk that back to something far more inocuous that would get caught up in that mess. I do a screencast every day. Let's say that when I do one later today, I forget to turn the music off on my other Mac, which is playing songs through my stereo. In the background of the video, you can vaguely hear the music. Now let's say that other people like my demonstration enough that they embed my video on their site.

The MPAA would call my inadvertant use of the music a violation - that's crazy enough. They now want to drag into their net anyone who linked to it, or embedded it. If that view ends up winning it's the end of sharing - how would you ever feel safe linking to anything if the MPAA could come after you over it? And before you say that you could still link if you were careful, consider domains changing - the perfectly nice site you link to today could end up being a content farm tomorrow. They couldn't get SOPA through the legislature, but it looks to me like they want to route the same effect through the courts. Given the level of technical expertise in that arena, we should be very afraid.

posted by James Robertson

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Money Grab

March 9, 2012 16:01:24.000

The insanity of this "search engines should pay" approach should be obvious:

Germany’s government wants search engines and news aggregators to pay news publishers for using pieces of their material.

What they want is to be paid by the people who make it easier to find their material. IMHO, Google (et. al.) should just remove all covered organizations from their search results, and see how well they like that outcome.

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posted by James Robertson

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Stupid is as Stupid Does

February 29, 2012 8:31:23.090

I see that it's not just the RIAA and MPAA that have terminal stupidity - there are artists out there who are afflicted as well. Consider what Spotify calls "windowing" - releasing music to iTunes (and other digital sales sites) prior to letting them play on streaming services. The theory is that this amplifies sales. That theory is just stupid, as John Irwin of Spotify explains:

Certainly it's not supported at all by data and facts. There's no data to suggest that it does [negatively affect] sales. To the contrary, our indicators point out that if you want to increase sales, you ought to be increasing access to your music. People want to listen to music--they don't want a 30-second sample. It's kind of wrongheaded to think you're creating scarcity by withholding [music from Spotify]. When you withhold a record on Spotify, it is available on torrent sites, on Grooveshark, as well as on YouTube likely. You're not creating any kind of scarcity.

The reality is this: everything you could download is available for free if you spend a couple of minutes looking. Most people are willing to pay if you make it simple enough. Make it hard, and you'll just increase piracy. That then generates idiocy like SOPA and ACTA, as a response to the eariler stupidity. It becomes a really vicious circle, in which no one wins....

posted by James Robertson

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The Not So Free Internet

February 19, 2012 13:42:24.389

SOPA may have been sidelined, but you would never know it - DHS isn't happy enough frisking people without cause at airports, they've moved along to shuttering domains without any stated rationale:

The website JotForm.com, which allows individuals to create their own forms easily, has had its main domain, jotform.com "suspended" by the US government, due to "an ongoing investigation." Because of this JotForm is forcing all of its users to change their forms to use their .net domain rather than their .com.

The way this will play out is obvious - internet startups (and existing firms, for that matter) are going to transfer their domains out of the US. It's the only rational business move, given that otherwise, your site could inexplicably go dark. If we stay on this track, the US based internet will end up being a push only, MPAA and RIAA approved dead zone.

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posted by James Robertson

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Why SOPA Must Die

January 18, 2012 8:37:45.007

Stop SOPA

image credit: Google

SOPA (and the Senate version, Protect IP) aren't just a little bad; they make the DMCA look like reasonable legislation. What they set up is a system of prior restraint that would make publishing on the net nearly impossible for anyone but the wealthy and well connected. In what way, you ask?

In an attempt to stop "pirate" sites, the proposed law targets any site that has links to "illegal" content. Over the last few years, I've linked to many, many sites. Commenters have linked to many others. Over time, some of those domains change hands. Sometimes, a domain that was owned by an individual talking about Smalltalk gets bought up by a content farm. Bam - every post and comment that linked there would be a reason to not only shut down my site, but charge me with a felony. Under that kind of regime, who in their right mind would risk linking to anything? In one fell swoop, SOPA attempts to rewind the clock to the push only model of content coming from approved sources.

It gets worse though - using "circumvention" software would also be illegal. The way the law is written, editing your hosts file to route around the damage would be an illegal act.

If you like the open internet, check out Google's action page on this.

As part of all this, I'm not going to be posting a screencast (or anything else) today - this post will stay at the top of my site. Back to business tomorrow, but for now - don't just sit there. Help stop this pile of stupid.

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posted by James Robertson

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Partial Victory

January 14, 2012 8:35:10.678

Looks like the outcry over SOPA has had a limited win:

Some late breaking news here: following Lamar Smith's announcement that the new manager's amendment for SOPA will remove DNS blocking (to be added back at a later date after it's been "studied"), Rep. Issa has announced that he will now postpone the "nerd" hearing that he was holding in the House Oversight Committee, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday. The key reason? Majority Leader Eric Cantor has promised him that he will not bring the bill to the floor unless there's real consensus on the bill.

At least the bums rush aspect of the bill is over; with luck, slowing it down will take us to the election cycle, and the bill can just languish.

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posted by James Robertson

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Stupid, Harmful, and Toothless

January 12, 2012 14:31:41.000

This is what happens when laws are created by people who don't understand what they are legislating:

Apparently it all comes down to the fact that The Pirate Bay has a .org domain — and according to Masnick, the current version of the SOPA bill working its way through congress excludes American domestic domains from being the target of takedown notices from copyright holders. In this case, a “domestic domain” is any domain that comes from a TLD run by an American registry — and sure enough, .org’s registry is Public Interest Registry, a US non-profit based in Virginia. In other words, thepiratebay.org isn’t eligible for a SOPA-based takedown, even if its servers are based in Sweden or another country outside the US. Believe it or not, by the same logic, .com and .net domains — both of which are managed by American company VeriSign — would also be immune from the SOPA bill as it currently stands.

In a nutshell, this is why I'm skeptical of "expert" opinion. I notice that on subjects I have fairly deep knowledge of, "expert opinion" is nearly always wrong - and not just a little wrong. This leads to a simple question: if they get the stuff I know well wrong, what about everything else?

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posted by James Robertson

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SOPA Opposition Gets Bigger

January 11, 2012 14:51:59.000

I've written a bit about SOPA - the new copyright law that's being debated makes the DMCA look reasonable (yes, it really is that bad). One of my senators is a co-sponsor (of the senate version, under the name Protect IP), which makes me even happier about the whole thing.

Reddit plans to go dark for a day in protest:

The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to reddit and many other sites you use everyday. Internet experts, organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists, and individuals have repeatedly expressed how dangerous this bill is.

This proposal really is that bad, and the first place it would get used would be to silence political opposition (of all stripes, but especially of the opposition candidate versus incumbent sort) under the cover of "copyright infringement".

The DMCA lets copyright holders lodge a takedown notice against alleged infringement - this bill makes that kind of thing a felony. And never mind the restriction to "foreign websites" - you try and imagine Google filtering based on the plethora of stupid that the copyright industry will toss out if this passes. You try to imagine any site running any kind of open comments section, when a stray link could result in DNS banishment. We're headed to a "great firewall of America" with this bill.

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posted by James Robertson

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Copyright Madness

December 17, 2011 11:21:10.618

The Megaupload/Universal spat tells you everything you need to know as to why SOPA is a really, really bad idea. If you give the clowns in the entertainment industry this kind of power, it will be abused. Heck, since SOPA lets them shutdown (without any warning, mind you) any site that links to allegedly infringing content, no website is safe. Which I'm sure the MPAA and RIAA are happy wth.

Meanwhile, Eric Raymond has a wake up call for the many good netizens who are shocked, shocked to see this happening. As he says, what did they expect?

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posted by James Robertson

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