rivkat | Entries tagged with copyright

I was reading the Megaupload indictment, as you do, and found a couple of points of interest. First, an answer to a question about Megaupload that occasionally arose pre-shutdown: “On or about March 3, 2009, DOTCOM sent an e-mail to a reporter indicating ‘Whenever a user uploads a new file it is checked against our database and if we already have the exact same file the upload completes instantly. This way a complete system backup into the cloud only takes a fraction of the time it used to take. And the longer we exist, the more files we receive, the faster we get.’”

Also, Megaupload didn’t care about infringements of the little people’s works. No Hong Kong materials were allowed, because the company was based in Hong Kong, but one email directed an employee, in response to copyright complaints from Mexico, “In the future please do not delete thousands of links at ones from a single source unless it comes from a major organization in the US.”

Finally, several individual uploaders and premium members in the Eastern District of Virginia were identified by first and last initial, though they weren’t named as unindicted coconspirators. Still, that subpoena’s gotta be pretty terrifying.

Crossposts: http://rivkat.livejournal.com/346609.html

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Yes, I know, it's the time zones plus daylight savings time, but I'm enjoying myself!

Stop the E-Parasite Act: worth checking out if you’re in the US; this is a terrible law that we will try to export and other countries will use to justify censoring whatever they don't like.

Counteragent is making a SPN genderswap film, written by Naomi Novik; you can follow the production at the film's LJ and there's also a tumblr though I know nothing of those.

Crossposts: http://rivkat.livejournal.com/335702.html

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Via Renee Hobbs:

You may be aware that every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office enables users who believe that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) limits their fair use rights to use copyrighted material for socially beneficial purposes to apply for an exemption. In order to prepare a comment for consideration on behalf of educators and students, we seek your opinions and experiences. Please take five minutes to complete this survey. Click here:

Educational Use of Copyrighted Movies and Videos

Your opinions are important! Thanks for helping to advance the legal interests of educators and students who are eager to use copyrighted materials for teaching and learning.

Crossposts: http://rivkat.livejournal.com/335498.html

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For Ada Lovelace day, I can't do better than

lucyp's amazing ode to

lim. But I want to add in a bit about Corynne McSherry, the Intellectual Property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Like it or not, for tech to do what we want it these days we need lawyers who understand tech, and she's one of the best. Like your DMCA exemptions in the US? We're going to have to ask for them AGAIN, because they don't last, and we have a new Register of Copyright making the calls so all bets are off. The EFF, with Corynne at the helm, and the OTW are going to be working together on vidding exemptions, and the EFF is also responsible for the "jailbreaking" exemptions that let people install the software they choose on their own iPhones. I'm grateful for the incredible work of the AO3 coders, testers, and sysadmins; I'm also grateful that we're not alone in recognizing that fanworks are worthy of respect. Go EFF!

I leave you with the image on my EFF T-shirt, courtesy of xkcd:

Crossposts: http://rivkat.livejournal.com/330859.html

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copyright,
personal

Mainstream pop-culture/remix-savvy media: have a Woody Allen supercut.

Fandom, specifically

thingswithwings: have a manpain supercut.

The bonus meta post is well worth reading, and to my mind bears some eerie similarities to the reasons given by Jeff Koons for why he copied fashion photos in his painting Niagara, reasons which led a federal court to find that he was engaged in fair use. As

thingswithwings points out, there were dozens of examples to choose from without thinking hard, and that's what makes this such a useful commentary. Also, I like excluding John Crichton for the reason given!

Crossposts: http://rivkat.livejournal.com/317922.html

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(cross-posted to fandom_lawyers)

The EFF and several other organizations have released a set of fair use principles for the new world of content filtering. Of special note for fans is that the principles come with a test suite, featuring fanvids and vid-type creations.

Current Music: R.E.M. - Nightswimming

Tags:

copyright,
fandom

(Crossposted to

fandom_lawyers) I am passing on a message I received from students at the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic at American University:

The Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic at American University is working with the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) on a FTC complaint against major content providers including the NFL, the MLB, Universal, DreamWorks, Harcourt Inc., and Penguin Group. The CCIA alleges that these corporations have engaged in a nationwide pattern of unfair and deceptive trade practices by misrepresenting consumer rights under copyright law by posting misleading and overreaching copyright warnings.

The Clinic is looking for anyone who has been injured or affected by these overreaching copyright warnings. That is people who chose not to use a particular work or modified their use of that work after reading the attached overreaching copyright warning. For example, a teacher who chose not to use a television, movie, or music clip in the classroom out of fear that his or her actions violated copyright law.

If you have a story or any helpful information regarding this issue, please email Marlee Miller or Khalil Malouf at copyrightmisuse@gmail.com.

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Choice phrases from the opinion I've been reading -- and FYI, these are legal arguments on which millions of dollars turn:

“‘Superboy’ is merely ‘Superman’ in smaller tights.”

“I cannot accept defendants view that Superboy was in reality Superman.... Superboy was a separate and distinct entity.”

Siegel v. Time Warner Inc., 2007 WL 2172822 (C.D.Cal.)

I love my job.

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copyright,
superman

Over the years I've seen a number of fan fiction/copyright debates, and (as with most ideological disputes) people's convictions about fan fiction's legality correlate strongly, but not perfectly, with their convictions about its morality. But there's always a set of fan writers & readers who say, often without investigating the subject much, "I know it's illegal but it shouldn't be," and I assume some on the other side who say the opposite, though I don't hang out with them.

The exact same thing happens with discussions of art & fiction featuring underage sex. And here, frankly, we're on firmer ground than with fan fiction & copyright, since there aren't any litigated cases on fan fiction. Depictions that aren't pictures or video of actual minors are judged by the standards for obscenity, not child porn. It is true that the moral panic doesn't distinguish between those, so what the law actually says is not the end of the matter. It is also true that a given piece of fan art could be obscene (writing is much less likely to be so, though it's not legally impossible), just as a given fan story could infringe. The reason lawyers give unsatisfactory answers to reasonable questions is often that the truest answer is "it depends." Moreover, there are of course a huge number of things it's immoral but not illegal to do or say; citizens must populate that set for themselves, whether in communities or as a matter of individual choice.

I'll leave you with the Auden poem.

Tags:

copyright,
fandom

Okay, so I am going to this conference, and Madhavi Sunder and Anupam Chander have a paper, The Right to Mary Sue (28 pages long, pdf), which will be published in a major law review. They use Mary Sue as a shorthand for much fan fiction, and also they argue that self-insertion into copyrighted works is a good thing. I am very sympathetic to their argument towards the rehabilitation of Mary Sue, though I have serious doubts about using her as the representative creation of fan fiction. Part of this may well be the usual fear that fandom will be misrepresented or misunderstood by outsiders. Chander & Sunder are very sympathetic – in fact, I think they overstate the liberatory potential of fan fiction – but there’s always that worry.

Anyway, I have an opportunity to offer comments, and I have plenty about Mary Sue as feminist heroine and slash as feminist liberation of the original text. What I lack, shamefully, is a comparable ability to discuss race in fan fiction/media fandom. Chander & Sunder argue that fan fiction allows marginalized groups to insert themselves in the text or reorganize the narrative around themselves, and couple that with discussion of the underrepresentation/misrepresentation of characters of color in TV/movies, but how often does that happen with race? We have plenty of gender-swaps; does anyone know of a race-swap story? Any good discussion of Teyla and Ronon as characters of color in SGA fanfic?

Things I already know I want to show them: Mimisere’s Jesus Walks (found a copy on YouTube, by the way; that result came up before any LJ result). Remember Us, the archive. (No SGA section, interestingly.) Coffeeandink from 2002. Them Mean Ol’, Low-Down, Lando Calrissian Blues. Blaise Zabini is black (oh darn, am I going to have to explain FandomWank to them?).

I have been reading cultural appropriation posts with interest, but I didn’t realize I’d need to try to do some outreach. So if anyone has links to good discussions of race in fandom that could help explain us – the good and the bad – to some smart, capable people, I’d really appreciate it.

Current Mood: busy

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copyright,
fandom

I once bollixed an interview by not having anything worthwhile to say about the subject of race and intellectual property law. I still don’t think I have much to say, though I can point you to Kevin Greene, who’s doing interesting work about the role of black artists in American copyright law, here and here. His work ties into the cultural appropriation debates on LJ, which have often asked questions about artistic choices. Looking at it from a legal angle increases one’s focus on the material consequences – the empty bank accounts, the records that didn’t go gold, etc. – of appropriation.

As Greene points out, lots of important IP cases have African-American plaintiffs and/or defendants. I’ve been thinking about copyright and gender, and both race and gender matter in the important Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. 2 Live Crew mocked Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman with a version of their own, and the Supreme Court concluded that the “big hairy woman” in the latter offered parodic commentary on the “pretty woman” in the former. Here’s a question: When you imagine the respective women described in those songs, what race are they? Would it matter to your view of the song if Orbison were singing about a woman of color? Or if 2 Live Crew were singing about a white or Asian woman? (The lyrics mention that she’s got an afro, which is a cultural clue – but then so is 2 Live Crew’s racial composition.)

Current Mood: headachy
Current Music: The Clash, I Fought the Law

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But why grade when there's a fandom debate going on?

( The Tiptree, Iolokus, and me )

Current Location: Riv-cave
Current Music: Tori Amos, Take to the Sky

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William Patry, copyright expert, discusses Mike shoes (homage to Nike) here

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Tori Amos, Way Down

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cesperanza should be particularly interested in this NYT story about directors claiming copyright in their particular stage directions for plays, whether the plays themselves are copyrighted or not. It's a very good story, though it contains a legal error about the amount of statutory damages available (it's $150,000 per work infringed maximum, no matter how many times you infringe, so it's hard to imagine how to get up to $3 million based on one play). There are also some resonances with debates about fandom -- how, if at all, can we compare the director's contribution to the play as performed with that of the playwright? Does making the director into an auteur necessarily involve diminishing the contribution of the playwright? As with many relationships, legal categories come in and cut up once-fluid bonds, ending the living give-and-take that produced the stage directions in the first place.

Tags:

copyright,
fandom

Gay Batman watercolors served with cease & desist letter. The pictures are still on the Artnet site for now -- some are not work-safe.

These are all apparently "Gay Batman watercolors," though most of the pictures are simply "nude Batman watercolors" -- the kiss/snuggling, both of which are portrayed clothed, make the solo nude portraits gay, I guess. Understandable in headline shorthand, of course, and consistent with the usual meaning of male nudes/males tantalizingly half-clothed, but still interesting to me.

Also of note: the hilarious, possibly made-up, first comment on the subject in Carrie McLaren's blog, insisting that BATMAN IS NOT GAY. Not even a little bit.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Sisters of Mercy, Dominion

Tags:

comics,
copyright

Following up on my post of a few days ago, Indefinitely Renewable Copyright: Batman versus the Utility Monster.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Skunk Anansie, You'll Follow Me Down

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I read an article today that included a reference to another law review article which argued that it's good that Superman is the intellectual property of a single corporation motivated to keep his image pristine, because otherwise there would be a lot of pornography featuring Superman.

...

I like my ivory tower better. Mine is much better stocked with porn.

I have deep theoretical thoughts about the broader issue -- what I call the J. Geils "My Angel Is a Centerfold" problem of people who suffer when their beloved icons are reworked without their consent, and how that should count when we're assessing how much freedom later authors should have to rework characters and situations -- which I will try to write up on my aca-blog. I think of such people as "utility monsters" in the Nozickian sense, because they gain utility by denying it to others (or, they are hurt by other people getting things those others want) -- but perhaps I am being unfair. (Short definition of utility monsters here.)

At least I was able to suggest some sources for the primary article's very casual discussion of Batman, which made the point that corporate ownership hardly ensures preservation of a single original vision of a character. Will Brooker's excellent Batman Unmasked, of course, and Geoff Klock's How to Read Superhero Comics and Why, which I'm enjoying reading, though so far its argument does not seem to justify the title.

Current Mood: urpy
Current Music: Don Ho, Shock the Monkey (no, really)

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Megaupload random thoughts

Went to sleep at 9; woke up at 5 and felt good

Calling K-12 teachers

Ada Lovelace day

reason why I hang out in fandom #18,348

Fair use and vidding

Seeking stories of copyright misuse

And now for something completely different

Law like love

Help me, Obi-Fan!

Blogging about race, authorship, and law

I should be grading

Fashion as fan fiction

(no subject)

Wertham is unsurprised

More on copyright and utility monsters

The sinners are much more fun

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February 2012