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The House of Commons (20 unread)

Creative Commons Asia Pacific Conference 2009

Posted: January 6th, 2009, 12:19am CET

The 2009 a href="http://www.cc-asiapacific.net/"Creative Commons Asia Pacific/a Conference will be hosted by the Arellano University School of Law, Manila, on the 5-6 February 2009.br /br /Visit the a href="http://philippinecommons.org/"Philippine Commons/a website for further information about the Conference, as well as other local CC developments and events.
Obama's transition website freely licensed... and the online commons quantification implications

Posted: December 2nd, 2008, 12:52am CET

a href="http://change.gov/"change.gov/a is the web site of Obama and Biden's transition to government, and they've licensed the content with a Creative Commons Attribution licence. Kudos.br /br /But when I read about this on lessig.org, I went to change.gov and couldn't find any reference to Creative Commons. I looked at the HTML source and there was no reference to Creative Commons. It turns out that there is a page on the site about a href="http://change.gov/about/copyright_policy"copyright policy/a, and this has a statement that covers all other pages on the site.br /br /If this kind of licensing (having one page on your site that states that all other pages are licensed, and then linking to that page from all other pages on the site) is common (and I think it is), it means that just counting links to Creative Commons (or any other licence, for that matter) gives you a pretty bad estimation of the number of licensed pages out there.br /br /As an example of what I'm talking about, consider the following comparison:br /ullia href="http://apsa.anu.edu.au/"apsa.anu.edu.au/a, a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Aapsa.anu.edu.au+link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcreativecommons.org%2Flicenses%2Fby-nc-sa%2F3.0%2F"230 pages linking to Creative Commons licences/a, a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Aapsa.anu.edu.au+apsa"of about 655 pages/a. (But please don't ask me which pages span style="font-style: italic;"don't/span link to Creative Commons licences, because I can't figure it out. That would be another blog post.)/lilia href="http://change.gov/"change.gov/a, a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Achange.gov+link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcreativecommons.org%2Flicenses%2Fby%2F3.0%2F"1 page linking to a Creative Comons licence/a, a href="http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkxewhDRJImUB9GpXNyoA?p=site%3Achange.gov+change"of about 432 pages/a./li/ulSo our naive methodology for quantifying the online commons - i.e. counting links to Creative Commons licences - says that of these two sites, which are about the same size, and are both wholly licensed with Creative Commons licences, the first one contributes 230 times as much to the commons as the second.br /br /I beg to differ.br /br /(For more on this topic, and some ways it can be tackled, see a href="http://commonsresearch.wikidot.com/local--files/fc2008-paper14/Methodologies%20paper.pdf"my paper from iSummit/a. And stay tuned for more.)br /br /(via a href="http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/changegov_set_free.html"lessig.org/a, via a href="http://reddit.com/"reddit.com/a)
What does 'non-commercial' mean to you?

Posted: November 26th, 2008, 7:45am CET

From Creative Commons, a href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/11045"originally posted/a by Mike Linksvayer:br /blockquotepAs a href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/9557"previously announced/a, Creative Commons is studying how people understand the term “noncommercial use”. At this stage of research, we are reaching out to the Creative Commons community and to anyone else interested in public copyright licenses – would you please take a few minutes to participate in our study by responding to a href="http://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/mds/mds08002?list=2" onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/v2.decipherinc.com');"this questionnaire/a? Your response will be anonymous – we won’t collect any personal information that could reveal your identity./p pBecause we want to reach as many people as possible, this is an open access poll, meaning the survey is open to anyone who chooses to respond. We hope you will help us publicize the poll by reposting this announcement and forwarding this link to others you think might be interested. The questionnaire will remain online through December 7 or until we are overwhelmed with responses — so please let us hear from you soon!/p pQuestions about the study or this poll may be sent to noncommercial@creativecommons.org./p/blockquoteSome of the earlier questions are oriented towards content creators. I answered 'not applicable' to a lot of them. I thought the question that asks you to define non-commercial use was interesting. I'll share mine in the comments on this post, and I encourage you to do the same (so don't read the comments until you've done the questionaire!).
'CopyrightNews' on Delicious: a tagging cloud for copyright stories and resources

Posted: November 21st, 2008, 4:00am CET

[emThis is a strongguest post/strong, written by/emspan style="font-style: italic;" David Vaile, Executive director, a href="http://cyberlawcentre.org/"Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre/aspan style="text-decoration: underline;"/span /span-- Abi]br /br /"The a href="http://delicious.com/CopyrightNews"Delicious CopyRightNews account/a has been running for almost 18 months now, and has been growing bigger by the month. Not sure if I am finding more articles or copyright is becoming a more discussed topic!" This is a digesting service for mostly Australian copyright material, a useful example of social tagging to share access to a wide range of emerging commentary from diverse sources. It is apparently run by a href="Vanessa.TUCKFIELD@deewr.gov.au"Vanessa Tuckfield/a, who is doing a review of it at present.
Stefani and baby Zuma pic released under a Creative Commons licence

Posted: November 1st, 2008, 12:14am CET

This is one for the young folks (and the media), and something a bit different too. From Eric Steuer at the a href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/"Creative Commons blog/a:br /br /divdivblockquotestronga href="http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10422"Gwen Stefani and baby Zuma pic online under a CC license/a/strong/blockquote/divbr /br /div/divimg style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/uploaded_images/Stefani-Zuma-718615.jpg" border="0" /embr /divblockquoteemPhoto: Dennis Stefani, (c) Mrs. Me, Inc., 2008, made available under a CCbr /BY-NC-ND license/em /embr //blockquote/divdivblockquotepPop star a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/en.wikipedia.org');" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Stefani"Gwen Stefani/a and her husband, rocker a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/en.wikipedia.org');" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Rossdale"Gavin Rossdale/a recentlybr /welcomed a baby, Zuma Nesta Rock Rossdale, into the world. Many celebritiesbr /contract with a magazine to arrange an exclusive photo session that debutsbr /mother with newborn. But Stefani and Rossdale took a different approach andbr /hired their own photographer and put the photo online for the public under abr /Creative Commons a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"BY-NC-ND/a license, along with some additional terms that allow all print magazines, newspapers, and blogs to use the photo - even commercially, with some restrictions. You can download a high-res version of the photo (and check out the additional terms the photo is available under) at a onclick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview ('/outbound/www.gwenstefani.com');" href="http://www.gwenstefani.com/news/default.aspx?nid=17103"Stefani’s site/a. /p/blockquote/div/div
The Copyright Act

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 7:07am CET

a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2006/09/contributors.html#catherine"Bond/a introduced me to the Copyright Act today (I never studied law, you see). It's got a section in it that's pretty neat from my perspective. Section 32, which I will summarise (this is probably very uncool in legal circles, to paraphrase like this, but I can 'cos I'm not a lawyer):br /blockquoteThere is copyright in a work if:br /ulliThe author is Australian; or/liliThe first publication of the work was in Australiabr //li/ul/blockquoteYeah, that's it with about 90% of the words taken out. Legal readers, please correct me if that's wrong. (I can almost feel you shouting into the past at me from in front of your computer screens.)br /br /So to explain a little further, there's copyright under Section 32 in all works by Australian authors, and all works by any authors that publish their works in Australia before publishing them elsewhere. There's also a definition of 'Australian' (actually 'qualified person'), but it's not particularly interesting. And there's some stuff about copyright in buildings, and people who died, and works that took a long time to produce.br /br /Anyway, what good is this to me? Well, it makes for a reasonable definition of span style="font-weight: bold;"Australian copyrighted work/span. Which we can then use to define span style="font-weight: bold;"the Australian public domain/span or span style="font-weight: bold;"the Australian commons/span, assuming we have a good definition of span style="font-weight: bold;"public domain/span or span style="font-weight: bold;"commons/span.br /br /It's a very functional definition, in the sense that you can decide for a given work span style="font-style: italic;"whether or not to include it in the class of Australian commons/span.br /br /Compare this with the definition ('description' would be a better word) a href="http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-1/bildstein.asp#4"I used in 2006/a:br /blockquoteCommons content that is either created by Australians, hosted in Australia, administered by Australians or Australian organisations, or pertains particularly to Australia./blockquoteYuck! Maybe that's what we mean intuitively, but that's a rather useless definition when it comes to actually applying it. Section 32 will do much better.br /br /Thanks, Bond!
Open Education Workshop 2008

Posted: October 30th, 2008, 3:39am CET

(Via a href="http://pipka.org/"Pia/a)br /br /The Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software (ASK-OSS) supported by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, is hosting a workshop to explore Open Education in teaching, learning and research across schools and universities. We invite you to participate in this strategic event where you will discover Open Education initiatives around the world, as well as help contribute to the direction of Open Education in Australia for 2009 and beyond.br /br /Speakers include:br /ulli Dr Philip Long, MIT iCampus Project (now at University of Queensland)/lili Dr Cyprien Lomas, University of British Columbia/lili Raju Varanasi, Centre for Learning Innovation, NSW DET/lili Professor James Dalziel, Macquarie University/lili Delia Browne, National Copyright Director, MCEETYA/li/ulspan style="font-weight: bold;"When:/span 21st of November, 2008 - 8:30am to 5pmbr /span style="font-weight: bold;"Where: /spanMGSM, Macquarie University, Sydneybr /span style="font-weight: bold;"Cost: /spanFreebr /span style="font-weight: bold;"Registration amp; Information see:/span a href="http://www.ask-oss.mq.edu.au/"http://www.ask-oss.mq.edu.au//a
Copysquare and Konomark

Posted: October 29th, 2008, 5:41am CET

You know how sometimes you're not getting anything done and so even blogging about something you haven't thought about for a couple of months seems like progress? But I should have blogged about this by now anyway, and that's justification enough.br /br /Back at a href="http://icommonssummit.org/"iSummit '08/a, there was a presentation by a href="http://www.law.und.edu/LawFaculty/Profile/eejohnson.php"Eric E. Johnson/a, Associate Professor at the a href="http://www.law.und.edu/"University of North Dakota Law Faculty/a. In fact a full paper is available on the iSummit research track website, a href="http://commonsresearch.wikidot.com/fc2008-paper7"here/a.br /br /You could read the full paper but I'm not expecting you to. I only browsed it myself. But I sat down for a while and talked to Eric, and his ideas were interesting. I think that's the thing that impressed me most about him. He was thinking outside the square (apropos, try to join a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ninedots-1.png"these 9 dots/a with 4 straight lines, connected end-to-end; hint: start at a corner).br /br /Hmm... I probably just lost half my readers, and I didn't even get to Copysquare and Konomark.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"This is a href="http://konomark.org/"Konomark/a:/spanbr /a href="http://konomark.org/"img src="http://konomark.org/konomarks/konomark_full_tag_en.png" //abr /It's a way for you to say you're willing to share your intellectual property. It is span style="font-weight: bold;"not/span a licence. It is not a legal mechanism; it has no legal effect. It's the IP equivalent of a href="http://store.xkcd.com/#JustShy"this t-shirt/a. You don't want to grant an a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses"irrevocable licence to all/a, but if people ask you for permission to re-use or re-purpose your work, there's a good chance you'll say yes, and you certainly won't be offended that they asked. It's one brick in the foundation of a culture of sharing. I think a href="http://lessig.org/"Lessig/a would approve.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"This is a href="http://ericejohnson.typepad.com/pixelization/2008/04/copysquare---a.html"Copysquare/a:/spanbr /a href="http://copysquare.org/"img src="http://www.copysquare.org/copysquare_banner_logo.png" height="50" //abr /Okay, that's just the icon. Copysquare is actually a licence. I'm not sure if it's fully developed yet, but it's close. It's main focus is for people who want to create small, quality creative works that can be included in larger productions, such as movies.br /br /The example Eric gave is a cityscape scene in a TV show, where most of the show is filmed indoors, but there are these little clips that remind the viewer of the geographic location of the story. The show that springs to mind is a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_%28TV_series%29"House, MD/a. I'll quote Wikipedia:br /blockquoteExterior shots of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital are actually of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_University" title="Princeton University"Princeton University's/a a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frist_Campus_Center" title="Frist Campus Center"Frist Campus Center/a, which is the University's a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_activity_center" title="Student activity center"student center/a.span class="reference"/span Filming does not, however, take place there. Instead, it takes place on the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Company" title="Fox Broadcasting Company"FOX/a lot in a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_City,_Los_Angeles,_California" title="Century City, Los Angeles, California"Century City/a./blockquoteHere's what Eric E. Johnson said to explain the licence (from his a href="http://ericejohnson.typepad.com/pixelization/2008/04/copysquare---a.html"blog post about it/a, also linked above):br /blockquoteCopysquare uses three basic license provisions to pursue its aims: (1) a requirement of notification, (2) a right to reject, and (3) “favored nations” treatment./blockquoteHe goes on to give this paraphrasing of the licence:br /blockquote"You can use my creative work – film footage, picture, sound effect, etc. – in your creative work, but you must notify me that you are doing so (the notification provision), give me a chance to opt out (the right to reject), and you need not pay me or credit me, but if you pay or provide credit to others for the same kind of contribution, you must pay me and credit me on an equal basis (the favored-nations provision).”/blockquoteSo say you were the person who took that aerial shot of the Princeton Campus. You put your stuff on the web and copysquare it. Someone uses it in their YouTube videos, uncredited, not-paid for, but lets you know first and so that's cool. Someone else tries to use it in a McCain campaign add, and you assert your right to reject. And the production crew from House, MD., use it, tell you, credit you (because they credit others) and pay you (because they pay others). And everyone is happy, except probably not McCain because he is way behind in the polls right now.br /br /I'm not the law expert, but span style="font-style: italic;"if/span it works like this, I think it's pretty neat. I like the favoured nations idea: if you're producing a work on a shoestring budget, use my contribution freely; but if you're paying others, pay me too. Note that this is not in fact about whether your project is for a commercial product. It's about whether it's a commercial production. The idea, as Eric explained to me, is that you're happy for small time players, say independent film producers, to use your work. But if there are credits in that independent film, you want to be in them. And if Hollywood is going to use your work, you want a little something financially, just like everyone else working on the film is getting.br /br /Damn, I thought this was going to be a short blog post. Well, I guess it was for those of you who got distracted by the nine-dots puzzle and stopped reading. (Didn't try? a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Ninedots-1.png"There's still time/a.)br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"A commons of copysquared material/spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"span style="font-weight: bold;"/span/span?br /br /So around about whspan style="font-weight: bold;"span style="font-weight: bold;"/span/spanen Eric was giving his presentation at iSummit, I was thinking about how to define 'the commons' (for my purposes). It was something I wrote about in a href="http://commonsresearch.wikidot.com/fc2008-paper14"my paper/a and talked about in my presentation. And I realised that by my definition, konomark and copysquare material weren't included. In fact it's how I came to talk to Eric, and I put it to him that copysquare wasn't a commons based licence.br /br /No surprise, he accepted my argument (it was, after all, only an argument from definition), but we both agreed that this doesn't make copysquare any less useful. Anything that helps the little guy get noticed, get credited, get paid if his work is useful enough, and promotes sharing, has got to be good.br /br /It seems to me that konomark and copysquare each fill a niche in the sharing space. In fact niches that, before iSummit, I hadn't realised existed.
Suzor on the ACTA Briefing

Posted: October 28th, 2008, 2:35am CET

Last Friday (24 October), the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade held a public forum in Canberra on the a href="http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/acta/index.html"Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement /a(ACTA) (see Sophia's previous post a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2008/06/gettin-medieval-on-yo-ipod.html"here/a). While House of Commons housemates were unable to attend (conference papers, theses, emRemix/em, oh my!), a href="http://nic.suzor.com/"Nic Suzor/a has an excellent, substantial account of the forum on his blog a href="http://nic.suzor.com/blog/2008/20081024-dfat_briefing_on_the_current_state_of_acta"here/a. Here's a taste:br /blockquoteToday I attended a briefing session on ACTA hosted by the Australianbr /Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). I felt it was a good meeting,br /and I really got the sense that DFAT were interested in public participation.br /There was a good deal of frustration on both sides of the fence – participantsbr /expressed serious concerns about the lack of transparency in the negotiatingbr /process, and DFAT consistently repeated that they were bound by confidentialitybr /agreements and could not divulge details of the draft text of the agreement.br /Participants in the Tokyo round of negotiations agreed that the full text of thebr /agreement will only be made available after negotiations have been concluded andbr /the text finalised. Understandably, there were a number of members of thebr /audience who were hesitant to accept any of DFAT's assurances as to the contentbr /of the agreement without access to the negotiation documents.br /br /Overall, whilst I think that the process is far too secretive, DFAT appearbr /to have gone a long way to make available what they can, and they seem genuinelybr /interested in hearing from interested parties in Australia. Unfortunately, inputbr /will be limited (blind) until negotiations are complete and the text finalised,br /but DFAT assures us that they are considering the issues thoroughly and therebr /will be genuine opportunity to debate whether or not to sign at the end of thebr /process.br /br /The big points I would take away from the meeting are:br /ulliNegotiations will go 'well into 2009';/liliThe Commonwealth Government is not seeking to drive domestic changes throughbr /ACTA./liliOverall, there do not appear to be any great changes to Australia'sbr /enforcement regime – it appears to be more focused on affecting otherbr /states;/liliThe Government intends to limit the effect of any treaty to trademarkbr /infringement and commercial scale copyright infringement;/liliHowever, statutory damages for copyright infringement are on the table; /liliNext meeting, in December, will consider internet distribution;/liliCamcording is likely to be criminalised;/liliThere's still time to make relevant submissions to DFAT – indeed, theybr /release a substantial amount of information once they receive the draftbr /proposals before every negotiation round;/liliDFAT has a copy of the a class="urlextern" title="http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx" href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx" rel="nofollow"Cutler report/a./li/ul/blockquotebr /Interested readers should head over to Nic's site to read the rest (and also have a look at the outline of Nic's PhD on 'Virtual environments and digital constitutionalism' - looks as though it will be an immense contribution to this area).
Can I Remix Lessig's 'Remix'?

Posted: October 26th, 2008, 2:32am CET

Book Review: span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Econom/spany, Lawrence Lessig (2008, The Penguin Press, USA). divbr //divdivWhile we all know the old adage to not judge a book by its cover, the cover of span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"Remix/span is probably the best of Lessig's tomes to date, an attractive blending of pink and blue circles to create purple. So when I sat down on Thursday night with my white dust-jacketed hard-cover copy and opened up to the Tiffany-blue inside cover, I was a little surprised by what I read. The first line of the dust-jacket blurb states that "The author of span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"Free Culture/span shows how we harm our children...". Snippets of span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons"The Simpson /a/spancharacter a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recurring_characters_from_The_Simpsons#Helen_Lovejoy"Helen Lovejoy's /arecurring shriek came to mind, "Won't somebody please think of the children!" Perhaps this is an unfair comparison, but I admit I was a little perturbed by Lessig's framing his argument in such a way./divdivbr //divdivStill, I soldiered on with emRemix/em and, overall, I was impressed by Lessig's latest contribution. Lessig frames his text in terms of the development of 'Read Only' culture, which dominated the 20th century and 'Read/Write' culture, which we are experiencing the beginnings of now, particularly with regard to user-generated content. As with his previous texts, Lessig draws on a number of examples to illustrate why we need to create a 'hybrid' economy that draws upon both the commercial and sharing economies. For the most part, Lessig is quite persuasive in his argument and, as always, writes in a non-legalistic way that many can understand. /divdiv /divdiv /divdiv /divdiv /divdivbr /Yet there are a few things that to me lessened the impact of the book. My criticisms of emRemix/em are basically two-fold, and these won't bother everyone. The first is - and you can criticise me for stating this - the essentially all-American focus. Lessig talks about how we are damaging 'our children', when clearly this is really 'our children in the western world with access to a computer'. This may seem an unfair criticism; not every book needs to address the disparity between developed and developing countries and Internet access, but Lessig does not even acknowledge this point. This is a particular shame given that Creative Commons licences are now being ported to many different jurisdictions and it would have been a good opportunity to show how the concept of 'remix' works in these jurisdictions. Perhaps Lessig might address this in the future.br /br /The All-American focus also bothered me with regard to Lessig's recommendations for legal reform. Again, Lessig pioneers the, 'let's make copyright an opt-in system and reduce the length of protection' position. Let me say this once and for all, to all those Americans out there who have made the same or similar points: THE BERNE CONVENTION EXISTS. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do the keyboard equivalent of yelling. But I imagine my future thesis examiners will not be impressed if I make a number of suggestions for reform that completely ignore the reality of Australia's international obligations. The Berne Convention dictates a certain period of protection for works and other subject matter and, in fact, the United States has extended its protection beyond that minimum (and indeed made Australia do the same). Suggestions for reform that ignore these obligations are essentially useless. We need to start thinking about reforms that work within the current system and, admittedly, Lessig does so, for example, by suggesting a simplification of current copyright law. But choosing to ignore the reality of international obligations lessens the impact of those other suggestions, unless Lessig is willing to address this issue at an international level.br /br /My second point is that I think Lessig needs to reconsider who his target audience is. Lessig writes about the impact of blogs; he writes about Wikipedia; he writes about YouTube, Amazon, Google, Flickr. The trouble is the people who will read emRemix/em and ordered his book as quickly as I did, will be individuals who blog; have edited Wikipedia; shopped on Amazon.com; and use Google, YouTube, and Flickr. They may have some legal knowledge (at the very least a brush with copyright law). They will probably also be American, actually.br /br /Thus the majority of Lessig's readers, particularly those who buy the first run of emRemix/em, probably know as much about his modern examples as he does. In fact, Lessig himself has encouraged this, by creating wikis for his books that his readers can directly contribute to. So there is no reason any more to re-write the details of Wikipedia's birth. Benkler has done it. Zittrain has done it. Lessig has done it. Even I have done it. Let there be no more, please.br /br /This may seem a harsh criticism, and certainly there will be people who read emRemix/em and this is their first brush with such a brave new world. But if you are reading this review, then you probably know a reasonable amount about this area anyway, and can probably see where I am coming from./divdiv/divdivbr /Despite these criticisms, as I said before overall I did enjoy emRemix/em...and, in the spirit of the hybrid economy that Lessig writes about, I look forward to contributing to the a href="http://wiki.lessig.org/Remix"emRemix /emwiki/a, and not receiving any payment for that. /divdiv/div
Australian Institute of Criminology report on 'Intellectual property crime and enforcement in Australia'

Posted: October 20th, 2008, 12:18am CEST

Last week the a href="http://www.aic.gov.au/"Australian Institute of Criminology/a released its report ona href="http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/94/" emIntellectual property crime and enforcement in Australia/em/a, with some very interesting findings. I haven't had a chance to go through the whole report yet but I just wanted to make a general comment about this statement, which I find completely unsurprising (at p. 38):br /br /blockquoteAn Envisional study found Australia was the second-largest downloader of onlinebr /pirated TV shows in the world (15.6%), behind the UK (18.5%) but ahead of the USbr /(7.3%). Australians were the leading downloaders of pirated TV programs on a perbr /capita basis. The report found that increased bandwidth take-up, technologicalbr /advances and a high demand for US-based TV shows are some of the reasons thatbr /piracy has boomed. Seventy percent of the piracy occurs through BitTorrent (BT)br /(Envisional 2004, BBC News 2005, Reuters 2005). The survey found that the top TV show downloads were 24, Stargate Atlantis, The Simpsons, Enterprise, Stargatebr /SG-1, OC, Smallville, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galactica and Lost (Idatobr /2005). /blockquotebr /Australia is, and has always been, since colonial times, an importer or 'user' nation of copyright-protected materials, so it came as no surprise to me that we were the second-largest illegal downloader of television shows. The fact that Australia is an 'importer nation' was picked up in the a href="http://www.ag.gov.au/agd/WWW/clrHome.nsf/Page/Overview_Related_Reports_Report_to_Consider_what_Alterations_are_Desirable_in_the_Copyright_Law_of_the_Commonwealth_(the_Spicer_Report)"Spicer Committee's report/a and then later with regard to the intellectual property package of the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-United_States_Free_Trade_Agreement"AUSFTA/a. Back in the ye olde colonial days, the majority of our books were imported from the United Kingdom, with many UK publishers and then eventually some colonial publishers, producing specific 'colonial editions' for sale in Australia. As Martyn Lyons has noted in a chapter of the fantastic emA History of the Book in Australia 1891 - 1945/em, Australia earned itself the reputation as being 'the jewel of Britain's book trade empire.' (see Martyn Lyons, 'Britain's Largest Export Market', in Lyons amp; Arnold (eds) emA History of the Book in Australia 1891 - 1945/em, 2001, at p. 19).br /br /Until about five years ago, a similar statement could be made regrding Australia's importation of international television shows, predominantly from the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom (I think a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bill"emThe Bill/em /aand a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen"Jane Austen /aminiseries adaptations would comprise a lot of that market!) And, just as in the colonies Australian readers had to pay a considerable amount more than their UK counterparts to purchase the latest fiction, Australians had to wait a long time to see new episodes of their favourite TV shows.br /br /a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_West_Wing"emThe West Wing/em /ais an excellent example - originally it was aired on the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Network"Nine Network/a, who changed the time and date of broadcast so often that many viewers began to resort to Amazon.com to get the latest series on DVD. Eventually (thankfully) it was picked up by the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation"ABC/a and the sixth and seventh seasons were shown weekly until the end of the series.br /br /With examples like this, it is really no surprise that Australians have turned to the Internet to catch their favourite shows just after they have been aired in the United States. This is not to suggest that I support this type of behaviour but it poses a challenge to the free-to-air networks in Australia to change their business models, and I know a number have. In an article published yesterday in the emSun-Herald/em newspaper (accessible of the emSydney Morning Herald /emwebsite a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/networks-taking-on-download-thieves/2008/10/18/1224351021947.html"here/a) it is noted that shows such as a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_tv"emHouse/em /aand the US version of ema href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kath_%26_Kim_(U.S._TV_series)"Kath amp; Kim /a/emare appearing about one-three days after they appear in the States. Yet some very popular shows, for example, ema href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_(TV_series)"Heroes/a/em, are still taking over a fortnight to get to our screens, though that is still being described as 'fast-tracked'. Not fast enough, clearly.
The IceTV Hearing

Posted: October 19th, 2008, 1:49am CEST

The High Court has now heard the appeal in IceTV v Nine Network (previously blogged about a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2008/09/icetv-in-high-court.html"here/a, a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2008/07/appeal-decision-in-channel-nine-v-ice.html"here/a and a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2008/08/icetv-granted-special-leave-to-appeal.html"here/a). The House of Commons has received several kind tip-offs about the hearing, but as this housemate just finished a thesis chapter and the last thing that I wrote on was originality under the 1968 Act, a few days were needed to re-group.br /br /The proceedings began on Thursday morning and the a href="http://www.digital.org.au/"Australian Digital Alliance/a and Telstra were both granted emamicus/em status, the ADA for IceTV and Telstra for Nine Network. David Catterns, the barrister who successfully argued for CAL in the recent emCAL v NSW/em decision appeared for Telstra. The hearing took the better part of Thursday and Friday and the transcript of the Thursday proceedings can be found on AustLII a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/HCATrans/2008/356.html"here/a.br /br /As I said, this is the first of a few posts on the hearing, so I will have more of a discussion up within the next few days.
Untitled #1

Posted: October 10th, 2008, 5:21am CEST

During an Alice Springs gallery visit last Friday, Arts Minister Peter Garrett energetically hyped the great benefits that a a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2008/mr20081003.html"resale royalty scheme/a will apparently confer on visual artists in Australia. The proposed legislation to establish a right to resale royalties for visual artists is expected to be in place by mid-2009.br /br /The announcement that the royalty scheme will soon be a reality is undoubtedly good news for many visual artists. Royalties will be payable upon all ‘original works of graphic or plastic art’ that sell for $1000 or more, upon their second sale. The right will apply to all eligible works that are acquired after the legislation commences – whether the first acquisition or transfer of ownership was by gift, inheritance, sale, or some other means. The royalty payable will be calculated at an uncapped flat rate of 5% of the resale price.br /br /The media release reporting Garrett’s announcement pointed to a number of advantages in the introduction of the scheme: Indigenous artists and their estates will benefit from both the significant increases in price that many works are now fetching on the secondary market, as well as the requirements for greater accountability and record-keeping that will be contained in the legislation. Visual artists in general will benefit from the fact that a right to royalties places them in the same field as artists working in the mediums of music, film, literature and so forth, where royalties are an established part of those artists’ income from their work.br /br /Unsurprisingly, a few significant factors were conveniently glossed over during the fanfare. Firstly, the definition of what will constitute a ‘work of art’ appears to contain some substantial holes. The definition proposed will be based upon that utilised in the EU, and covers works in such media including “a painting, a collage, a drawing, a limited edition print, a sculpture, a ceramic, an item of glassware or a photograph”. Video/digital/new media are conspicuously absent from this definition, and it will be interesting to see how (or if) the right also applies to works that are sold as ‘installation’-type suites, including video, sound and so on.br /br /Further issues are raised when the outcomes of the scheme, and precisely who will benefit, are considered. While Indigenous artists have been a particular (and deserving) focus in this aspect of the debate over introduction of the scheme, the a href="http://www.arts.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/12024/Proposed_Resale_Royalty_Arrangement_Discussion_Paper.pdf"Discussion Paper/a issued by DCITA in 2004 made the point that often, female artists (from all backgrounds) are underrepresented in the secondary art market (2004, p34); male artists, and especially white male artists, are by far the dominant group in terms of whose work fetches significant prices upon resale. While the $1000 minimum resale price opens the scheme to many visual artists, the recurring issue of whose art is bought and sold more often, involving arguments about gender/culture/race and the art market, are unavoidable.br /br /The resale royalty scheme is a valuable and long-overdue right for visual artists. Re-examining how a ‘work of art’ is to be defined will be an important aspect in the drafting of the legislation, and hopefully one that is paid due attention considering the increasing interest in new/digital media in contemporary art practice. Most importantly, the scheme is certainly not a final answer to supporting the entire visual arts community, in all its diversity. As the a href="http://www.arts.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/15141/Arts_Law_Centre_of_Australia.pdf"Arts Law Centre/a stated in its response to the Discussion Paper:br /blockquote…this is but one mechanism for increasing the income steam of artists in Australia. It does not negate the need for other support mechanisms being available to visual artists and craftspeople, such as increased funding to the visual arts and many of the other proposals outlined in the Myer Report (2004, p6)./blockquotebr /Indeed, this blogger is waiting with interest to see which killer arts policy is next heralded by Peter Garret.
'What History Teaches Us About Copyright Injunctions'

Posted: October 9th, 2008, 10:25am CEST

Sent through to the House of Commons by Professor a href="http://law.unsw.edu.au/staff/BowreyK/"Kathy Bowrey/a:br /br /For readers interested in reading more on copyright's early history (1500-1800) and unable to spend a month or two at Kew public records, there is a great article by a href="http://www.lclark.edu/faculty/tomas/"H. Tomas Gomez Arostegui/a, 'What History Teaches Us About Copyright Injunctions and the Inadequate-Remedy-at-Law Requirement', 81 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1197 (2008).br /br /Tomas has also started compiling a website where he includes an Appendix of Copyright Infringement Suits amp; Actions From c. 1560 to 1800, and pdfs of some of the cases. More cases to follow as he expands the resource. You can find this all a href="http://www.lclark.edu/faculty/tomas/appendix.html"here/a.br /br /It is a really impressive project.
Resale Royalty Rights - Coming Soon

Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 7:22am CEST

span style="font-size:100%;"According to a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2008/mr20081003.html"this media release/a (via the /spanspan style="font-size:100%;"spanMinister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett)/span/span we can expect the implementation of a resale royalty rights scheme for Australian visual artists by 1 July next year.br /br /More info is available a href="http://www.arts.gov.au/artists/resale_royalty"here./abr /br /Sophia has previously blogged about the proposed scheme a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2008/05/cheques-finally-in-mail-for-some.html"here/a.
Bowrey on Originality

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 4:27am CEST

As many readers will know, the issue of originality within Australian copyright law is currently a hotly contested issue, with the appeal in the IceTV v Nine Network decision to be heard before the High Court in two weeks time, on the 16th and 17th October.br /br /a href="http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/staff/BowreyK/"Professor Kathy Bowrey/a, author of ema href="http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521600480"Law and Internet Cultures/a /emand House of Commons friend (and one of my supervisors), has recently penned an article on these issues, titled 'On clarifying the role of originality and fair use in 19th century UK jurisprudence: appreciating "the humble grey which emerges as the result of long controversy"'. Kathy's article has a slightly different focus: tackling originality in 19th century case law and how this concept developed. The abstract states:br /blockquoteUnderstanding nineteenth century precedent is one of the more difficult tasks inbr /copyright today. This paper considers why the nineteenth century cases andbr /treatises failed to clearly identify what the author owns of “right” and thebr /implications for the criterion of originality and for determining infringementbr /today./blockquoteYou can find it in the UNSW Law Research Series a href="http://law.bepress.com/unswwps/flrps08/art58/"here/a and for any readers interested in the forthcomingem /emIceTV case this is a must-read. Two weeks to go...
State Library of New South Wales on Flickr Commons

Posted: October 2nd, 2008, 3:14am CEST

Being a very dedicated PhD student, I spend a lot of time in libraries, and the a href="http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/"State Library of New South Wales/a is one of my favourite to visit. The Mitchell Collection of the State Library, housed next to a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domain"the Domain/a, is in my view one of the best libraries in Australia and houses an immense collection of colonial (and yes, more recent) documents.br /br /div/divdivOn a recent trip when I was undertaking research into colonial publishing practices, I was lucky enough to access a copy of a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tess_of_the_D%27Ubervilles"emTess of the d'Urbervilles/em /aby a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy"Thomas Hardy/a, which was published as part of Petherick's Collection of Favourite and Approved Authors. That series, published by a href="http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050483b.htm"E.A. Petherick amp; Co./a was one of the few series of books published by local publishers. The copy of emTess/em that I handled was a beautiful book, published in 1892. The State Library staff kindly informed me that there were more recent editions of Hardy that I could have a look at...and then looked slightly confused when I wanted a copy of the inside covers of the book (which contained a listing of all the books in the Petherick series...you can read exactly why I wanted to see this when I finish my thesis in about six months time)./divbr /divThis walk down memory lane is an avenue for announcing that the State Library of New South Wales has just released rare Australian photographs from its archive onto a href="http://www.flickr.com/"Flickr/a. If that copy of emTess /emwas anything to go by then there are going to be more than a few cultural gems released as part of this collection. You can find the complete photostream a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/"here/a but I thought I would include one photo in this post, which would allow me to continue my time travel through Australian history:/divpimg style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/uploaded_images/Isaac-Isaacs-700834.jpg" border="0" /emSir Isaac Isaacs and Lady Isaacs/em, photographed by Sam Hood, from the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, featured on the SLNSW Flickr photostream a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/2869624206/in/set-72157607365291312/"here/a, persistent URL a href="http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/staff/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=42811"here/a. /pdivFor those of you who are not familiar with a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Isaacs"Sir Isaac/a, he was Australia's first native-born Governer-General and the 3rd Chief Justice of our High Court. Sir Isaac dissented in the first case on the power of the Parliament to make laws with respect to copyrights, patents of invention and designs, and trade marks (section 51(xviii)) in emAttorney General (NSW) ex rel Tooth amp; Co Ltd v Brewery Employees Union of NSW/em./divdiv/divdiv/divdiv /divdivThis concludes today's lengthy lesson on Australian copyright and cultural history! /divdiv/div
IceTV in the High Court

Posted: September 18th, 2008, 3:52am CEST

The High Court will be hearing the appeal in the emIceTV v Nine Network/em decision on 16 - 17 October 2008. This is sooner than many of us expected - IceTV was only given special leave to appeal the decision on 26 August this year. Read more about the appeal at housemate Abi's previous post a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2008/08/icetv-granted-special-leave-to-appeal.html"here/a.
Software patents in the Review of the National Innovation System

Posted: September 10th, 2008, 8:47am CEST

The Review of the National Innovation System came out yesterday, commissioned by the a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/"Department of of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research/a. See all the details, including the full report, at a href="http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/"http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview//a.br /br /I'm currently preparing a paper on the Open Source software developer's perspective on software patents (with a friend of mine, a href="http://oj.id.au/"Owen Jones/a, who has the real expertise in patents), and so naturally I was interested in what the expert panel had to say about software patents. I have to admit I haven't thoroughly worked through it yet, but here is a paragraph that I think is very interesting, from the initial overview chapter:br /blockquote"Intellectual property is also critical to the creation and successful use of new knowledge – particularly the 'cumulative' use of knowledge as an input to further, better knowledge. In this regard, particularly in new areas of patenting such as software and business methods, there is strong evidence that existing intellectual property arrangements are hampering innovation. To address this, the central design aspects of all intellectual property needs to be managed as an aspect of economic policy. Arguably, the current threshold of inventiveness for existing patents is also too low. The inventive steps required to qualify for patents should be considerable, and the resulting patents must be well defined, so as to minimise litigation and maximise the scope for subsequent innovators." (page xii)/blockquoteblockquote/blockquoteI think this is a great admission. First, it recognises that we need to ensure that our current innovations can contribute effectively to future innovations. Then it acknowledges that patents are granted too easily, and specifically mentions software patents as an area where more harm is being done than good.br /br /Maybe I'm reading a little too much into it. Or maybe I'm just reading between the lines.br /blockquote/blockquote
Rowling Wins in 'Harry Potter Lexicon' Case

Posted: September 9th, 2008, 12:55am CEST

This just in...JK Rowling, the author of emthose /embooks about a fledgling wizard, has won her case against the unauthorised publication of the emHarry Potter Lexicon/em, based on the website of the same name. Housemate Abi originally blogged about the case a href="http://www.cyberlawcentre.org/unlocking-ip/blog/2007/12/harry-potter-lexicon-fair-use_07.html"here/a. According to the emSydney Morning Herald /emreport on the case, following the decision Rowling stated that:br /blockquote"The (Lexicon) took an enormous amount of my work and added virtually nobr /original commentary of its own. Now the court has ordered that it must not bebr /published"...br /br /"Many books have been published which offer original insights into thebr /world of Harry Potter. The Lexicon just is not one of them."/blockquoteAccording to reports it is likely that the decision will be appealed. More can be read at the emSydney Morning Herald/em a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/magic-still-works-for-rowling/2008/09/09/1220857494266.html"here /aor for those in the mood for some lighter reading, at the Internet Movie Database a href="http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0563043/"here/a.

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