The head of the US copyright office has accused Congress of making a mistake by extending the length of copyright in America, calling the term "too long," and saying that Congress made a "big mistake."

Boing Boing: Copyright office head denounces Sonny Bono Act

Why, then, does the software industry want patents at all? Software firms, in the main, don't rely on software patent in fundamental ways—they innovate to make a better product.

There is some interesting information in this article, but there are also some conclusions I don't like. I don't think the Stallman "all software patents are bad" solution is the right answer. I've seen software patents used by entrepreneurs to sell their companies. Without them, you either have to become Microsoft or you die. Furthermore, I've certainly seen Microsoft collect on patents, from powering mice from the serial port to displaying text on television sets. I think the problems are:

1. Obvious patents are bad. The standard for obviousness used by the PTO is very, very weak. They need a completely new perspective on how to assess this.
2. Patents should not be issued for things you can't actually do, even if you might be able to do it in the future.
3. Heres a radical idea: If you could not have copied the patented product you didn't violate the patent. The ensures that obvious ideas aren't covered, and it ensures that patent trolls aren't covered either. No one is going to independently invent RSA. However, if you invent wireless email you're going to have to actually get a product out there that people might have seen before you can argue that someone might have copied you. (I realize they might have read the patent database, but they didn't. The patent database is almost completely useless. It was designed as a thing for engineers to read, and yet engineers cannot read it for fear of criminal liability lest they violate something. It should be done away with.)

Weapons of Business Destruction

NAS and NSTA do not have to endorse the Kansas Board of Education's decision to teach intelligent design. The theory isn't supported by science, and Kansas should not be able to imply that teaching it comports with NAS or NSTA standards. United States trademark law would certainly prohibit Kansas from claiming NAS or NSTA approval for its alternative curriculum. But instead, the organizations are leveraging their copyrights in the standards manuals to get Kansas to accept evolution theory.

I've avoided commenting on this discussion for a couple weeks specifically because I think the devil is in the details here, and no one talking about this has really illuminated the details to the point where I feel comfortable taking a position.

In general, I don't like the idea of copyright controlling derivative artistic works, because I think it limits people's freedom of expression, but there is a problem here. Ultimately, if you are taking a large chunk of my IP, you really aren't making a "fair use" of the material, particularly if the thing you are publishing serves the same purpose that mine does. So you need to pay me. Its impossible for the legal system to distinguish between a scenario where I refused to sell you the rights because you can't meet my price, and I refused to sell you the rights because I hate you. So ultimately, copyright holders are going to have some control over the artistic nature of derivative works. It cannot be avoided.

Furthermore, if you accept the line of reasoning that copyright should only serve a financial purpose you MUST reject the GPL, and you must at least raise questions about BSD licenses. These licenses do not require payment for a work. They simply impose a set of controls on the use of that work by others. How is that for a philosophical pandora's box? I'm not sure I'm afraid to open that box. Hence my unwillingness thus far to talk about this question.

Why is this science standard copyrighted? Does that copyright exist entirely for the purpose of control, or do they charge for it? If they charge for it, and Kansas wishes to use it almost in it's entirety but with criticial changes, is it not within their rights to refuse to sell it. Is all use of copyright for control bad?

I think the standard that we have is that you can use copyright to control, but only certain kinds of control are ok. You cannot prevent comment, criticism, etc... You can prevent the release of closed source modifications, or competitive works that are largely derivative. These balances are muddy and messy and still evolving. I don't think there are any bright lines here. I do wonder if the fair use exemptions for educational purposes might apply to Kanas in this case?

On the other hand, Its not clear that this decision by this science board is simply an attempt to stifle criticism. It may be an attempt to prevent a copyrighted work from being used to produce a competitive, mostly derivative work which the original authors object too. It may be more the sort of control that we accept rather then the sort of control that we don't accept. I don't think anyone has made a clear case about where it falls on that spectrum. More details about what is specifically going on are needed. Seems like it might make a meaty trial...

I'm not sure terms like "conservative" and "liberal" make sense in the funhouse world of artificial scarcity. But, to the degree that they do, Granick is not a copyright liberal. GPL is copyright "liberalism." Her perspective requires it's rejection. She is a copyright minimalist. A public domainer. A Copyanarchist.

Intellectual Property Evolutionists Are Wrong!

The Motion Picture Association of America filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Fred Lawrence of Racine, seeking as much as $600,000 in damages for downloading four movies over the Internet file-sharing service iMesh.

Grandpa is sued over grandson's downloads

Imagine that you somehow convinced policymakers that the auto industry could make cars that operated with no energy source at all. You could then demand that the auto industry make all sorts of concessions in energy policy, and you could continue to criticize them for foot-dragging no matter how much they did.

If you were using this ploy, the dumbest thing you could do is to set up your own “Perpetual Motion Labs” to develop no-energy-source cars. Your lab would fail, of course, and its failure would demonstrate that your argument was bogus all along. You would only set up the lab if you thought that perpetual-motion cars were pretty easy to build.

Which brings us to the movie industry’s announcement, yesterday, that they will set up “MovieLabs”, a $30 million research effort to develop effective anti-copying technologies.

This commentary is entertaining but Felton is missing the point. The movie industry doesn't want DRM that prevents "piracy," they want DRM that increases the scarcity of their product as far as regular users are concerned, ala DIVX, while also preventing fair use of the material.

Freedom to Tinker - Movie Studios Form DRM Lab

Dubbed Creative Commons, this system is some sort of secondary copyright license that, as far as I can tell, does absolutely nothing but threaten the already tenuous "fair use" provisos of existing copyright law. This is one of the dumbest initiatives ever put forth by the tech community. I mean seriously dumb.

Dvorak rails on Creative Commons. I think he is intentionally pretending to be more confused about it then he really is, because he wants to make a point. People are unbeleivably dumb when it comes to licenses. I recall dealing with a guy once who had published a software library that said both public domain and all rights reserved on it. His responses to my queries about this were nonsentical.

CC is being promoted as "hip," particularly by BoingBoing and related community. People who would otherwise put their stuff in the public domain are putting CC no commercial use licences on them instead. There is a risk that this will remove more content from the public domain then it will add. Furthermore, you are now starting to see people release source code that is "Creative Commons licensed." Creative Commons doesn't have a license for source code.

Why doesn't Creative Commons has a small commerical use license that lets the work be used commercially as long as the revenue generated by the context of the use is under a certain amount ($50,000)?

Opinion Column by PC Magazine: Creative Commons Humbug

"Open source would be succeeding faster if the GPL didn't make lots of people nervous about adopting it." From the article: "I don't think the GPL is the principal reason for Linux's success. Rather, I believe it's because in 1991 Linus was the first person to find the right social architecture for distributed software development."

Eric Raymond has said a lot of things that I strongly disagree with. This time, however, I think he is exactly right. There have been sparse few who've contributed to open source projects because they had to, and none of that "had to" code has been fundamental to the success of the system. On the other hand, the GPL has held projects back.

Slashdot | We Don't Need the GPL Anymore

Tommorow is the big day. This URL should have lots of links and analysis as the decision comes down.

SCOTUSblog - Discussion: Grokster

By 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the 27 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee received more than 11,000 emails and faxes. That's nearly 500 faxes an hour. Dianne Feinstein alone received more than 2,600 messages in her inbox. Kay Hutchison, the senior senator for Texas, received 1,441 letters.

EFF: DeepLinks - Follow up on request for Broadcast Flag advocacy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and its ideological allies argue that this kind of license is invalid and unenforceable because of a "fair use" right to reverse engineer. I'm not so sure about that, though.

The real question should be: Would a reasonable person expect to find that kind of restriction in a software license agreement? If the answer is yes, it's a legal contract. (Courts have properly ruled that unexpected fine print in a standard contract, such as a no-alcohol-at-all clause in a car rental agreement, is unenforceable.)

Nobody is forcing Blizzard customers to click "I agree." In fact, they can return the software for a full refund if they don't like the fine print. Or they can continue the reverse-engineering process without the benefit of having the software installed normally--a more difficult task, but not impossible.

Don't be surprised if the 8th Circuit chooses tried-and-true contract law over the hacker ethic.

This is wrong on so many levels, and yet possibly correct. The fact that you might expect to find a restriction doesn't make it reasonable. The idea of reverse engineering software without installing it is a bit silly. We ought to have the right to take things apart. However, this is something that probably can only be done with legislation. We'll see how this case sorts out.

Putting the DMCA on trial | Perspectives | CNET News.com