Reaching what I can only think of as an obvious conclusion, a Harvard Business School professor has published a paper arguing that interpreting copyright exceptions narrowly harms investment in innovation. The paper is here.
This ties in nicely with an editorial piece here, which argues that the protection of business models — as copyright does — promotes the protection of profits in the face of change. It does not cite all of its facts, but the theory is interesting to consider nonetheless.
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
Monday, 18 June 2012
New Internet Domain Names
A topic which probably straddles a few modules - and I'll try to cross post.
You have probably seen reports of the ICANN initiative to allow (for a very significant price) organisations to bid for their own top level domain name. The link below
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en
should take you to the current state of affairs. What do you think? My own feeling is that many of the names applied for will never be commercially successful. In itself perhaps not new with ICANN. There have been a number of top level domain names - such as .biz - which have been established and failed miserably in the market place.
You have probably seen reports of the ICANN initiative to allow (for a very significant price) organisations to bid for their own top level domain name. The link below
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en
should take you to the current state of affairs. What do you think? My own feeling is that many of the names applied for will never be commercially successful. In itself perhaps not new with ICANN. There have been a number of top level domain names - such as .biz - which have been established and failed miserably in the market place.
Friday, 8 June 2012
The British Library UK Web Domain Research Project
Looking through the stats on my website this morning, I noticed an entry I had not seen before — a crawler from the bl.uk domain:
Investigating, it seems that the British Library is attempting to "assess the feasibility of archiving the UK domain," in a project
This seems like a huge project — to capture and store *everything* stored on a website with a UK domain pointing to it.
The British Library goes on to say that:
Is something really the "the UK’s online intellectual and cultural heritage" simply because it has a UK domain pointing to it? I note that my primary web server is not in the UK, but has a .uk domain name, so it seems like the country in which the material is hosted is (currently) unimportant. If I were to register example.co.uk and point it to a site hosted in — say — South Korea, does this make that South Korean site part of the UK's heritage? When one considers the rules around "targeting" and making something available in another market over the Internet, the Alpenhof case sets out several factors to be considered, of which the choice of URL is perhaps one, but that perhaps overlooks that anyone can buy a domain name and point it anywhere they like, rather than needing to control the webserver to which the DNS resolves.
It is perhaps also interesting that crawling websites for content is now a key part of storing our heritage — huge swathes of information, potentially to be held on an ongoing basis, rather than a more selective harvesting of material.
I was not aware of this project, but it sounds very interesting indeed.
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; heritrix/3.1.0 +http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/digi/domresproj/index.html)
Investigating, it seems that the British Library is attempting to "assess the feasibility of archiving the UK domain," in a project
This seems like a huge project — to capture and store *everything* stored on a website with a UK domain pointing to it.
The British Library goes on to say that:
This work is undertaken in anticipation of forthcoming Legal Deposit regulations that will make it the Library’s statutory responsibility to collect, preserve and provide long-term access to the UK’s online intellectual and cultural heritage.
Is something really the "the UK’s online intellectual and cultural heritage" simply because it has a UK domain pointing to it? I note that my primary web server is not in the UK, but has a .uk domain name, so it seems like the country in which the material is hosted is (currently) unimportant. If I were to register example.co.uk and point it to a site hosted in — say — South Korea, does this make that South Korean site part of the UK's heritage? When one considers the rules around "targeting" and making something available in another market over the Internet, the Alpenhof case sets out several factors to be considered, of which the choice of URL is perhaps one, but that perhaps overlooks that anyone can buy a domain name and point it anywhere they like, rather than needing to control the webserver to which the DNS resolves.
It is perhaps also interesting that crawling websites for content is now a key part of storing our heritage — huge swathes of information, potentially to be held on an ongoing basis, rather than a more selective harvesting of material.
I was not aware of this project, but it sounds very interesting indeed.
Friday, 1 June 2012
"O2 porn filesharers to be sent letters from film-maker"
Here's a story on the BBC, that, following a successful Norwich Pharmacal application in March, the rightsholders (one hopes...?) in a series of pornographic films are to contact individuals suspected of having uploaded the content in question, to extract some money from them.
(You can read the judgment granting the order here, but it's one of Arnold J's now pretty common lengthy judgments!)
The producer of the content in question claims, rather reasonably, that, whilst someone who downloads a mainstream film may be using it as a quality testing process before going to the cinema, and thus supporting production in that way, pornographic content does not have the same alternatives for reaching an audience, and thus a download is less likely to lead to revenue.
It's still apparent to me that, under English law, there is nothing to indicate that one should be liable for another's use of their Internet connection (at least, in terms of a duty to prevent — if one were to authorise the infringement, then liability as a primary infringer under copyright law might be made out) and that, in any case, the only "evidence" is an IP address purporting to indicate that the traffic originated from a machine behind a given router, and says nothing about the individual in question. For those in houses with multiple occupants, proving who downloaded (or uploaded) the content is likely to be very difficult.
The second notable aspect here is that, perhaps following the ACS:Law fiasco, the court has approved the wording of the letter which is to be sent out — with certain phrases watered down or removed, it seems. This seems more than appropriate, as the ACS:Law letters were, in my opinion (having advised on the response to one of the letters), bullying and aggressive — a view seemingly shared with Arnold J.
(You can read the judgment granting the order here, but it's one of Arnold J's now pretty common lengthy judgments!)
The producer of the content in question claims, rather reasonably, that, whilst someone who downloads a mainstream film may be using it as a quality testing process before going to the cinema, and thus supporting production in that way, pornographic content does not have the same alternatives for reaching an audience, and thus a download is less likely to lead to revenue.
It's still apparent to me that, under English law, there is nothing to indicate that one should be liable for another's use of their Internet connection (at least, in terms of a duty to prevent — if one were to authorise the infringement, then liability as a primary infringer under copyright law might be made out) and that, in any case, the only "evidence" is an IP address purporting to indicate that the traffic originated from a machine behind a given router, and says nothing about the individual in question. For those in houses with multiple occupants, proving who downloaded (or uploaded) the content is likely to be very difficult.
The second notable aspect here is that, perhaps following the ACS:Law fiasco, the court has approved the wording of the letter which is to be sent out — with certain phrases watered down or removed, it seems. This seems more than appropriate, as the ACS:Law letters were, in my opinion (having advised on the response to one of the letters), bullying and aggressive — a view seemingly shared with Arnold J.
Oracle's Java APIs are Not Copyrightable
Groklaw is covering the US decision that Oracle's Java APIs are not copyrightable — a decision which, to my mind, can only be described as a common sense interpretation of the both the wording of the US copyright laws and international obligations, and also the stated purpose of copyright law for the US.
The judge held:
Now, one can only hope that a European court would reach a similar conclusion...
The judge held:
"The overall name tree, of course, has creative elements but it is also a precise command structure — a utilitarian and functional set of symbols, each to carry out a pre-assigned function. This command structure is a system or method of operation under Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act and, therefore, cannot be copyrighted. Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability....
Contrary to Oracle, copyright law does not confer ownership over any and all ways to implement a function or specification, no matter how creative the copyrighted implementation or specification may be. The Act confers ownership only over the specific way in which the author wrote out his version. Others are free to write their own implementation to accomplish the identical function, for, importantly, ideas, concepts and functions cannot be monopolized by copyright."
Now, one can only hope that a European court would reach a similar conclusion...
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