UC Berkeley's Pamela Samuelson has written a detailed review of (and response to) Jessica Litman's 2001 book, _Digital Copyright_.

Jessica Litman believes the public needs a very good copyright lawyer, and if I have not mistaken her intentions, she is volunteering for the job. ... In _Digital Copyright_, she outlines a framework for a copyright law that would be a new and better deal for the public and would be short, comprehensible, and normative in character. ... _Digital Copyright_ is Litman’s paean to a future in which copyright will once again be a component of the nation’s enlightened information policy.

... Digital Copyright explains how and why some of these limiting doctrines have eroded and why the public should care.

... Litman has done a great service in translating the arcana of copyright law into plain English, in masterfully explicating the breakdown of the copyright policy process, and in re-conceptualizing copyright law for an information age.

Toward a 'New Deal' for Copyright for an Information Age [PDF]

... "They say they are claiming copyright on a piece of mine called 'One Minute's Silence' on the Planets' album, which I credit Batt/Cage just for a laugh. But my silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence."

This is old news by now, but I just saw it and haven't seen it mentioned here. It's also another vote for multi-topic support, since I couldn't decide whether this article should be in the "Humor" (why not Humour?) topic or the IP topic.

Big noises at odds over the sound of silence

Pablo Picasso: "Mediocre artists borrow; great artists steal."

Copying is for artists, not consumers.

Imitation Is the Mother of Invention

Too much control can be a bad thing, particularly when innovation is a critical source of competitive advantage.

The stakes just got higher. In today's NYT, Berkeley professor Hal Varian (author of _Information Rules_) rails against Palladium in particular and DRM in general.

Varian is a bellwether for the wider response among academia and corporate enterprise. I suspect he'll publish a similar, perhaps more quantitative rant in an upcoming issue of Harvard Business Review. And another in CACM, alongside Pamela Sameulson's rant. And an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

I'm calling it -- time of death, oh six hundred hours, 4 July 2002.

Microsoft can afford to be wrong on this -- to them, it's just code. Pay the 'softies to spend their weekends at the office, and it keeps getting churned out. Plenty of cash flow to screw around for a few years under the protective umbrella of the Office suite.

Intel and AMD can not afford to be wrong. At this point it takes many, many billions of dollars to set up a fab line for a new microprocessor. If they build it and no one comes, it will take them years to dig out of the hole. The IBM/Motorola/Apple team will not fail to capitalize on the situation.

'Palladium Sucks, Don't Buy It'

The Congressman says it's "not fair" that copyright holders can't innovate in response to Napster and other P2P networks. His bill will protect anti-piracy tools and tactics, including interdiction, redirection, and spoofing. Critics call the tactics "subversive" and warn that such tactics would open the door to "cyber warfare" against consumers.

"Innovation" is the new euphemism for hacking. Get your war on.

Hacking for Britney

In Episode 1 of the game, you will follow Carabella as she tries to find and buy music by her favorite band, the Secret Irises. Carabella has various choices about how she can get the music. Each of these choices involves different digital rights management, which limit her ability to use and enjoy the music in different ways. The game's scoring system reflects the real-life trade-offs that face fans looking for music online. Carabella gets points for getting her music and loses points for making choices that take away her privacy and limit her ability to use the music, for infringing copyright in the music and for spending time or money to get the songs.

EFF Presents The Carabella Game: The Quest for Tunes

RIAA issued a statement calling the lawsuit "frivolous."

Although a voluntary advisory label seems reasonable enough, for the most part I have to agree with the RIAA on this one. I can't see how these CDs are illegal, any more than Liquid Audio files are illegal.

A silly analogy: Mice have two options. They could file a class-action lawsuit to ban the sale of mousetraps, or they could simply choose not to walk into them again and again.

DivX DVDs failed "naturally" in the marketplace under competitve pressures, and these "protected" CDs will suffer the same fate without legal intervention. If customers feel cheated in the absence of a pre-sale advisory notice, they are likely to change their music-buying habits. When sales drop 20% in a single quarter, the "record companies" (Ha!) will respond out of necessity.

In fact, CDs in general will suffer this fate sooner rather than later, if you believe David Bowie.

Again, this time with feeling:

Bart: Speaking of CDs, I don't care about CDs. I'll meet you laggards back here in ten years.

By that time, Bart will be walking around with a $10, 150 GB rewritable storage device that is the size of watch battery. And the logo on the device will be that of IBM, not BMG.

Lawsuit Challenges Copy-Protected CDs

Published on May 21, this is a 15 page report from the legal staff at the Congressional Research Service on the subject of fair use as it relates to the Internet.

It's a few weeks old at this point, but I haven't seen it mentioned widely elsewhere.

From the Summary:

The originating objective of copyright was to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. ... The fair use defense is integral to obtaining ... balance.

The advent and spread of Internet technologies pose new challenges to Congress and the courts in maintaining a balance ...

A bright line approach to fair use is difficult, if not impossible to formulate, as courts examine fair use on a case by case basis.

This report reviews the development of fair use on the Internet, and will be updated as circumstances warrant.

Fair Use on the Internet [PDF]

Bowie: "I don't even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don't think it's going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing."

David Bowie looks forward to the next music revolution.

David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur

"The free television that we've all enjoyed for so many years is based on us watching these commercials," said Jamie C. Kellner, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. "There's no Santa Claus. If you don't watch the commercials, someone's going to have to pay for television and it's going to be you."

Jamie Kellner hits the mainstream press. NYT's Amy Harmon on the confused economics of television media. I find it amusing that Kellner uses the concept of paying for television as a threat against piracy. I would contend that people want to (and do) pay for content because they dislike the annoying distractions and time burglars that are TV advertisements. Why doesn't he get this? Turner owns HBO, which owns the broadcast rights to the most successful cable series ever, which viewers are happily paying for.

Digital Video Recorders Give Advertisers Pause