He seems also to be suggesting that he wants to cease posting.
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current posts | more recent posts | earlier posts Is the troll tracker bowing out? The Troll Tracker has a post up today in which he says he is unsure about the use of the term patent troll because it doesn't distinguish owners of legitimate patents who exercise their rights from those who try to exercise questionable rights and patents. But then he goes on to say, "Anyway, over the last few months I have begun to transition out the term. It doesn't add anything to the dialogue; in fact, it distracts from the message I'm trying to get across. That message being that patents are not being asserted like they were 20 years ago, that today's American small and large businesses have to navigate a minefield like never before. Whether the plaintiffs are well-deserving individual inventors, their shell corporations, or large licensing entities solely seeking to monetize patents, it adds up for the mom-and-pop businesses and the big corporations alike. All I want to do is highlight who is behind these cases, who is backing them financially, and where these cases are being litigated. And if we can have some fun along the way, and not take ourselves so seriously, all the better, right?" link here
He seems also to be suggesting that he wants to cease posting. [Posted at 01/19/2008 07:08 PM by John Bennett on The IP Wars Terrible news for the recorded-music majors The Economist has a provocative piece on the recorded music industry and its death spiral in the sale of CDs and downloaded music. The subhead reads, "Last year was terrible for the recorded-music majors link here. The next few years are likely to be even worse." It cites three reasons: facing declining sales, big retailers are cutting display space; major distributors are cutting promotion to reduce costs; and they are refusing to invest in the growing parts of the industry, like touring. Downloads, for sale or free with advertising, do not get the same revenue return.
The article doesn't make this point explicitly, but the means for distributing music has changed, costs have been cut, and the majors are really out of a job. Copyright violations are a small part of the story, but they underscore the direction of industry trends. The spreading antipathy for enforcing copyright involving free exchanges will continue to cost the industry public support. [Posted at 01/13/2008 06:18 PM by John Bennett on IP in the News Sweden: free non-profit exchange of copyrighted material? There have been several references in blogs to the current debate in Sweden over stricter enforcement of copyright vs. making not-for-profit file exchanges completely legal link here. Perhaps the most significant elements left out of these posts was the role of Pirate Bay, the BitTorrent site of some fame, and the creation in Sweden of a Pirate Party, addressing this issue. Thirteen Swedish MPs in the Moderate Party have now come out in support of free exchange. The issue started with a government study of stopping currently "illegal" exchanges, leading to a set of extreme measures like taking away internet access to anyone caught exchanging copyrighted material and spying on private internet traffic. These appear to have violated the Swedish sense of individual rights. The copyright owners are now under attack as self-interested big businesses, not as protecting the rights of artists and authors.
This story isn't over. We don't know how it will finally play out. Though the opposition to more restrictions and more stringent enforcement is strong, it doesn't mean that legalizing all free exchanges will happen. Rather, the present lax regime of not, for the most part, enforcing copyright may simply continue. My most optimistic take is that free exchange will undermine restrictions on free exchange of copyrighted material around the world and force the recording and video business to find other business models. That will happen as long as Swedish sources of free downloads can be accessed, as currently with Pirate Bay. They do need better advertising in the rest of the world. We should however, expect the RIAA, MPAA, and owners of copyrighted material to go to extremes to put pressure on their governments and through them, on the Swedish government. We all have an interest in seeing that they don't succeed. [Posted at 01/13/2008 03:27 PM by John Bennett on IP in the News Troll Tracker: Patent Suits Worse in 2007 The anonymous Troll Tracker sums up 2007 on the patent front this way: "We reached the end of 2007 link here. All the other blogs are reporting an overall decrease in IP litigation, a cutback from 2006, or are reporting the slightest of increases in patent filings from 2006 to 2007. That's simply not true. By the real count -- the number of defendants sued for patent infringement -- 2007 was a record year. In fact, here's my headline: '2007 shows a 30% increase in patent litigation over 2006, fueled by a 40% increase in the Eastern District of Texas.'"
So all is not well on the patent front, contrary to what the patent monopolists want you to believe. The post is full of more such good stuff, so have a look. [Posted at 01/12/2008 01:46 PM by John Bennett on IP in the News Look who is violating copyright now Writing in the Washington Post today, Monica Hesse relates that a number of commercial media have taken copyrighted material like amateur photos from social sites like Facebook and used them, for example, in their ads without seeking permission. Some are now being sued or being told to stop link here.
Hesse is able to show that the violations have been frequent and verge on the systematic. The companies doing it offer excuses that it was the fault of a low level employee or a rare and thus exceptional attempt to capture reality, but the frequency suggests it was policy. Hesse quotes Larry Lessig that this sort of behavior will stop and order prevail when the community becomes familiar with the law and the individual prosecutes violations. Hesse suggests instead "total anarchy". I wonder whether use of "anarchy" here isn't right, given that individuals, particularly the young, feel pretty free about violating copyright, pleading either ignorance or assuming they are too small to go after link here. The law on fair use is often quite unclear, judging from the attempts of various groups to redefine it and the absence of court rulings or clear statute law link here. I feel like throwing up my hands and saying let's get rid of copyright but then I realize it isn't going to happen. But then I remember that we did get rid of prohibition when violations became overwhelming. Is this comparable? [Posted at 01/09/2008 08:36 AM by John Bennett on IP in the News Free downloads to seed classical music , alter class image The New York Times has a short piece noting that the British violinist, Tasmin Little, has made available her next recording, The Naked Violin, free for downloading in order to make the music more popular link here. Little is quoted as saying, "Just the fact that people can listen to it on a computer means that hopefully, they won't feel a need to have an education or be from a certain sector of society." You can download it from tasminlittle.net.
[Posted at 01/09/2008 06:35 AM by John Bennett on IP in the News New authors: Allow free download of copies to get known Two more authors have started the free downloading of their work according to Mike Masnick who takes the view that "obscurity is a bigger threat to being read than piracy" link here. Good point. One variation on the theme is to include ads with the book's download, making it produce some immediate, even if modest, income link here.
This could be catching. [Posted at 01/05/2008 07:43 AM by John Bennett on IP in the News Japan proposes extensive violations of freedom and privacy of the media Jacqui Cheng writes that the Japanese government is proposing extensive invasions of privacy including e-mail and other media, TV, news, and websites link here. Included is the web address of Gyaku, a Japanese a non-profit media project, which provides great detail in English on what is planned link here.
An operative paragraph of concern to Americans according to Cheng reads: "Finally, the proposals meant to target copyright infringement through P2P are the most invasive of the three. Currently, Japanese copyright law bars anyone from uploading copyrighted material to public websites, but the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (Monbukagakusho) has agreed to take a look at the law to see if it can't be taken a step further. Proponents of a tougher law have suggested that all copyrighted media make use of a unique watermark, and that any media that doesn't bear this mark would be considered "illegal." Given the American myth that copyright is such a boon to innovation and the success of IP owners in spreading the faith and mirror images of our law, we face growing encroachment on freedom and on technological progress. Reversing the restrictions becomes more difficult as more and more countries sign on. Our trade diplomats should be resisting this trend, not aiding and abetting it. [Posted at 01/04/2008 08:07 PM by John Bennett on IP in the News Chinese DVD pirates promote freedom Philip J Cunningham writes " I was browsing for DVDs on a cold winter afternoon in one of Beijing's finer bootleg shops when I came upon three boxed sets of DVDs critical of communism. One of the pirated sets, produced by Turkish presenter Harun Yahya, promised to detail the horrors of communism from an Islamic perspective, another by an American producer chronicled the uncomfortably bloody rise of modern China and the third contained Tiananmen footage from BBC TV News. Presumably the DVD pirates were in it for the money, but were they also unwittingly making China a freer place?... [T]he copyright zealots, mostly big US companies, with profit first and foremost on the mind, come down firmly on the side of information control and in that sense side firmly with the Beijing authorities."link here
Who would have thought that IP critics were revolutionaries? Stop the MPAA! [Posted at 01/03/2008 06:13 PM by John Bennett on IP as Censorship Man stands up to the RIAA with what looks like a winning case Writing in the Washington Post today, Marc Fisher observes, "Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing link here.
"Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry's lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle." He then goes to describe the case of "Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer." Howell is fighting the case. The problem here is that plenty of legal precedent exists that what Howell did is within his fair use rights. Once again, the RIAA is trying to extend the reach of copyright, at which it has so far been very successful. But Fisher concludes by noting that the "RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed." Know hope! [Posted at 12/30/2007 02:30 PM by John Bennett on IP in the News |
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