The Performance Rights Act of 2007 was introduced in both the House and Senate before going on recess. This bill would put commercial broadcasters on parity with webcasters and satellite radio in needing to pay royalties for the use of sound recordings.
David Pogue speaks at a college and finds out that kids today don’t believe that creative works fixed in a tangible electronic medium have any value: The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality:
“The exercise is intended, of course, to illustrate how many shades of wrongness there are, and how many different opinions. Almost always, there’s a lot of murmuring, raised eyebrows and chuckling.
Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I’d ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the demonstration bombed.
In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids’ morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.”
Public.Resource.org, Announcement: “Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.”
Very impressive. This opens the door for some very interesting possibilities for search tools and empirical analysis.
Previously: Freeing Caselaw
In the Listening Post blog at Wired, Eliot Van Buskirk tries out Boomshuffle, a new service from Snocap, New Direction For SnoCap: Free, 15-Song Embeddable Mixes: “The service only plays 30-second clips of the songs unless you include 15 tracks by 15 different artists, because that helps Boomshuffle qualify for a lower internet radio royalty rate — fine by me, I’d rather include more music anyway. Other royalty-related requirements: the songs shuffle, and users can’t skip to a specific song, rewind, or skip more than 4 tracks”
Here is a case of how the statutory licensing has directly shaped the way that this service operates.
Take a look at 17 USC §114(d)(2) and compare the limits of interactivity allowed for webcasters using the statutory license with the terms of the Boomshuffle service.
Type “nytimes” into your browser’s location bar. Unless you have a local server on your network called nytimes, some web browsers (including Safari) will automatically add “http://www.” and “.com” to bring you to The New York Times at “www.nytimes.com.” Other current browsers will search for the keyword in the user’s default search engine (including IE). That is, unless you get your internet access through Verizon.
Recently, Verizon has changed the way that its DNS servers react to these domain requests. Instead of sending the browser a “host not found” message, and following the individual user’s preferences, Verizon returns its own search page:
ConsumerAffairs.com, Verizon Overrides Internet Searches With Its Own Results: “The change has been advertised by Verizon as a way to help users reach the site they were trying to get to, but some are concerned that it’s done more to gain revenue from advertisements placed on the Verizon search site.”
In 2003, Network Solutions (the company that controls the .com and .net registries) made a similar change. While that change affected the entire internet’s DNS system for .com and .net domains, this affects only Verizon’s customers.
Susan Crawford, Monetizing Disorder: “Is this a violation of net neutrality? It certainly is a ‘system expectation violation.’ We don’t expect ISPs to be filtering our web browsing requests and inserting themselves into the conversation. There’s some concern that the ISP could be doing more than presenting a response page, as we’ve seen from the Comcast flap. Although in a larger sense it’s just what all the other players in the chain want to do – make money from disorder – we want to avoid having the plumbing, the transport, do this without a user’s acquiescence.”
Ed Felten, Freedom to Tinker, Verizon Violates Net Neutrality with DNS Deviations, “This is a clear violation of net neutrality: Verizon is interfering with the behavior of the DNS protocol, in order to drive traffic to its own search site. And unlike the Comcast scenario which might possibly have been justifiable as legitimate network management, in this case Verizon cannot claim to be helping its network run more smoothly.”
I hope that this is indeed fixed soon.
The Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review launched a new blog, The MTTLR Blog. It’s a nice site, so far, although there is a contrast between the majority of posts written with formal, law review-style footnotes and others with web-style hyperlink citations.
(Side note: this site is still somewhat under the weather, with permalinks not actually linking to the pages where the content lives. Please bear with me.)
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed lower court’s decision finding that a fantasy sports league’s “first amendment rights in offering its fantasy baseball products supersede the players’ rights of publicity” in linking their names to their baseball statistics. C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing, Inc. v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media
Previously, coverage of the District Court decision, Baseball stats in the fact-based community
In Time Warner Telecom, Inc. v. FCC, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Commission’s decision to classify wireline broadband as an information service was based on “a permissible interpretation of the Communications Act” with a “proper exercise of agency discretion.”
“The petition under review arises from an order of the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), which substantially limits federal regulation of high-speed Internet access service provided over traditional telephone lines (referred to as “wireline broadband Internet access service”). The dispute centers, in large part, on the FCC’s decision to relieve telephone companies of decades-old regulations that required them to grant competing Internet service providers nondiscriminatory access to their wirelines in order to reach consumers. The FCC contends that these regulations “imposed significant costs” on telephone companies, “thereby impeding innovation and investment in new broadband technologies and services.” (FCC Br. at 43.) Presumably, the FCC’s order now allows telephone companies to enter into individually negotiated arrangements with entities that seek access to their broadband wireline facilities.
“Petitioners, who are independent Internet service providers, competing telecommunications service providers, cable modem providers, and various public interest organizations, argue that the FCC’s order allows telephone companies to deny competitors access to their wirelines, thereby resulting in decreased competition and consumer choice in the market for broadband Internet service. For the reasons stated below, we conclude that the FCC’s order is based on a reasonable interpretation of the Communications Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 1064 (codified as amended at 47 U.S.C. §§ 151-614 (2006)), and a proper exercise of agency discretion. Accordingly, we will deny the petition for review.”
The result of this ruling is that the FCC may, at its discretion, free incumbent local DSL providers from competition over the same local telephone lines.
AP, Woman Sues Over Apple’s iPhone Price Cut: “A New York woman is so angry at Apple Inc. for lopping $200 off the price of the iPhone that she’s filed a lawsuit seeking $1 million in damages. Dongmei Li of Queens, N.Y., claimed the company violated price discrimination laws when it slashed the price of the 8-gigabyte iPhone by a third, from $599 to $399, within two months of the gadget’s June debut.”
The complaint certainly has some, er, interesting interpretations of antitrust and telecom law.
I can’t seem to upload any documents to my server, but here’s the complaint at Findlaw, Li v. Apple, Inc.
There could be an interesting case challenging the fairness of mobile phone contracts under consumer protection laws. This is not that case.
In The New York Times, Adam Liptak reports, Verizon Blocks Messages of Abortion Rights Group – New York Times: “Saying it had the right to block ‘controversial or unsavory’ text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.”
Verizon does not appear to be blocking text messages based on content, but discriminating on access to messaging features for advocacy of particular causes. The company prohibits “controversial speech” in its text message broadcast program and seeks to prevent its customers from being able to subscribe to controversial text message lists, against its own financial best interest.
Frank Pasquale, Concurring Opinions, Cell Phone Gag Rule: “This latest development should put net neutrality opponents on the defensive, at least in academic circles. Brett Frischmann and Barbara von Schewick have already called into question the economic foundations of the most sophisticated defense of a laissez-faire position on the matter. But Verizon Wireless’s new policy shows that the cultural consequences of untrammeled carrier control over content may be far worse than its potential to stifle the types of efficiency and innovation economists usually measure.”
While not directly enabling this kind of carrier preference, two recent FCC rulings touch on issues relating to the question of whether short-number broadcast text messaging services are part of wireless carriers’ common carrier obligation.
Last month, the Commission ruled that text messaging is part of the level of mobile service that subscribers expect to use while roaming, In re: Reexamination of Roaming Obligations of Commercial Mobile Radio Service Providers.
In March, the Commission classified mobile broadband services (200 kpbs and greater) as information, rather than telecommunications services. In re: Appropriate Regulatory Treatment for Broadband Access to the Internet Over Wireless Networks.
Update (9/27)
Verizon reversed course.
Adam Liptak, NY Times, Verizon Reverses Itself on Abortion Messages: “Reversing course, Verizon Wireless announced today that it would allow an abortion rights group to send text messages to its supporters on Verizon’s mobile network.”
David Lazarus, LA Times, Corporate propriety yields to free speech: “The company was now trying to work out a new policy that would accommodate the widespread use of text messages but also prevent ostensibly offensive material from traversing Verizon’s network — hate speech, for example, or porn.”
Amazon unveiled its long awaited digital download service today. It will be interesting to see where this leads, because this is the first true competitor to the iTunes Music Store.
Unlike the various Playsforsure stores, Amazon sells files that will play on iPods without any burning or re-encoding. These are just straight-up MP3s that will play on the iPod and just about every other digital music device ever made.
Buying tracks or albums is just as easy as iTunes, since iTunes licences the 1-click patent from Amazon. Amazon manages to overcome the disadvantage of living in a web browser as opposed to a music library by using a download helper to add purchases automatically to iTunes. (Installing the download helper also includes a free download of “Energy” by The Apples in Stereo.)
More impressions at Coolfer.
William Patry takes a look at some “non-partisan” copyright groups educational materials: The Patry Copyright Blog: Non-profit, non-partisan education in copyright: “It would be sad indeed if a balanced educational plan for copyright was unachievable, especially where there is a will to develop one.”
As Patry discusses, the copyright debate is not partisan in the traditional sense– it is not a Democratic-Republican party issue. Rather, it is partisan among the various interest groups, with the public interest often never considered in policy-making, or often relegated to just another special interest.
But, that’s a topic for another post.
This raises the question of how and when copyright should be taught to students. In the increasingly wired and creative classroom, Copyright is something that will come up as students scour the internet to download photos, videos and music to use in their school projects and presentations.
But at the same time, issues of plagarism/attribution, information literacy and ascertaining the veracity of sources also arise. For today’s students, web research and vetting sources should probably be taught along with basic copyright principles.
What needs to be taught in an introduction to information literacy and intellectual property curriculum? When is the best time to start to teach it? Elementary school? Middle School? High School?
The Department of Justice weighed in on the net neutrality debate and filed ex parte comments with the FCC, In re: Broadband Industry Practices, suggesting that the FCC “should be highly skeptical of calls to substitute special economic regulation of the Internet for free and open competition enforced by the antitrust laws.” The filing argues in favor of avoiding regulation and letting the market sort things out.
Letting the market sort out broadband internet access might be less than optimal public policy, if the market for broadband access is not competitive.
When broadband providers have market power in a local market, it creates the possibility for those providers to discriminate against content creators.
In a recent ISP Planet reports, Top 21 U.S. ISPs by Subscriber: Q2 2007, the top 5 providers nationally (SBC, Comcast, AOL, Verizon, Roadrunnner) accounted for 56.5 percent of the total market.
But on a local basis, each local market may be even less competitive. A Consumer Reports survey found that in many markets, there is no competition for broadband service, “The consumer broadband market has been a seller’s market, often limited to a single provider. Our survey underscored the lack of choice: Of readers who used any type of broadband service, 22 percent said they had chosen their type because it was the only broadband option available.”
Unlike in other contexts, in telecommunications, does deregulation not encourage competition? Is local broadband service more competitive than sources for organic food?
More links:
Frank Pasquale, Concurring Opinions, Questionable Advice On Net Neutrality: “The DOJ Antitrust Division’s just-released public comment on net neutrality (available here) has been getting a lot of press. Unfortunately, it appears that the shoddy analysis that Jack Goldsmith saw in the DOJ’s torture memos may also be infecting its approach to net neutrality.”
Brett Frischmann and Barbara Van Schewick, Network Neutrality and the Economics of an Information Superhighway: A Reply to Professor Yoo: “Network neutrality has received a great deal of attention recently, not just from legal academics and telecommunications experts, but from our elected representatives, the relevant agencies and the press. Our representatives have held multiple hearings on network neutrality and are actively considering whether to include a provision aimed at preserving network neutrality in pending telecommunications reform legislation. The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are also considering the issue. The press has been drawn to the debate by declarations that the fate of the Internet as we know it is at stake.”
And some coverage of net neutrality issues at the Future of Music Policy Summit:
News.com, Senator: Net neutrality push ain’t over yet “Some people say, well, but it’s a competitive marketplace, if one of the big interests tries to charge for its pipes..the customer will go elsewhere, it’s a competitive world,” Dorgan said. “Well, I’ll tell you what, you’re studying different economics than I am if you think this is competitive
FMC Summit Policy blog: Leveling the Playing Field: how does broadband policy affect musicians?
With the rise of bloggers into the mainstream media, critics of blogging, like Andrew Keen, worry that amateurism is destroying culture and that the blogosphere is a bunch of silly “user-generated nonsense.”
The problem with blogs giving voices to otherwise unpublished critics and commentators is that these critics are not working with the same thoroughness as the professional critics working for the mainstream media.
Adam Roberts’ The Amateur Gourmet is an entertaining food blog about restaurants and cooking. Roberts even converted the blog into a book deal. But the Amateur Gourmet notes the difference between the amateur restaurant critics and the professionals, Going Back: “Obviously, food bloggers don’t have the resources that professional critics do. We don’t have a newspaper picking up the tab when we go out to eat, it’d be impossible for most of us to eat our way through a menu without spending half our savings. So we go, our cameras in tow, and snap pictures of the two or three dishes we consume at this one meal and then scurry back to our computers to write it up.” After revisiting a restaurant he previously “reviewed,” Roberts finds that his initial impression didn’t quite capture the inconsistency of one Park Slope eatery.
If he reviewed after each time he went, then Roberts might ahve presented a more complete view of the restaurant. But readers can get this more complete view by using the web to search for multiple amateur and blogger positions.
The problem with Web 2.0/the blogosphere/UGC is not that it gives any idiot a voice. Rather, it shifts the burden of creating an overall final opinion from the publisher to the reader. Reading many reviews of bloggers who each visit a restaurant once may provide a more complete impression of a restaurant than one canonical review by a professional reviewer. Reading a selection of film reviews at Rotten Tomatoes can present a more complete impression than just reading Roger Ebert’s review. But the reader has the burden of filtering out idiocy shifts from the editor to the reader.
With readers who know how to properly evaluate the credibility and veracity of reviews, the aggregation of internet reviews can provide a fuller picture than the traditional, Keen-preferred, media. But for those in the media elite, the traditional model gives their voice more weight, and it is preferred.
But even in the blogosphere, a good reviewer carries more weight than some amateur. This is the basis of Google’s PageRank– that Roger Ebert’s links are given more weight and authority than Joe Blow movie reviewer. For restaurants, there will always be a need for localism. But will the internet affect off the television and movie reviews in local newspapers? Do readers need to read their local movie critic if they can go on the web and read reviews from Roger Ebert and Elvis MItchell? Or does it help smaller newspapers attract top critics? If Alan Sepinwall has a larger online profile because of his excellent blog as opposed to his work for the Star Ledger, doesn’t that help the Star Ledger. Perhaps critics who develop their reputation online are becoming more sought after– that a small town paper can raise its profile by hiring a top critic or columnist– and that moving to an outlet that’s not the NYT, WSJ or Washington Post might not be detrimental.
This week Publc.Resource.org announced a new initiative to make caselaw available for free on the web: In Re: State and Federal Cases and Codes
The goals of this project are:
The short-term goal is the creation of an unencumbered full-text repository of the Federal Reporter, the Federal Supplement, and the Federal Appendix.
The medium-term goal is the creation of an unencumbered full-text repository of all state and federal cases and codes.
John Markoff, The New York Times, A Quest to Get More Court Rulings Online, and Free: “The domination of two legal research services over the publication of federal and state court decisions is being challenged by an Internet gadfly who has embarked on an ambitious project to make more than 10 million pages of case law available free online.”
Tim O’Reilly, Radar, Carl Malamud Takes on WestLaw: “Carl Malamud has this funny idea that public domain information ought to be… well, public. He has a history of creating public access databases on the net when the provider of the data has failed to do so or has licensed its data only to a private company that provides it only for pay. His technique is to build a high-profile demonstration project with the intent of getting the actual holder of the public domain information (usually a government agency) to take over the job.”
Some other new caselaw search tools and archives include:
AltLaw: “AltLaw provides the first free, full-text searchable database of Supreme Court and Federal Appellate case reports. It is a resource for attorneys, legal scholars, and the general public.… AltLaw is a joint project of Columbia Law School’s Program on Law and Technology, and the Silicon Flatirons Program at the University of Colorado Law School. AltLaw was written by Stuart Sierra and Paul Ohm, with help from Luis Villa, and produced by Tim Wu.”
Justia provides free access to federal district court civil case filings.
vLex is now a subscription service that does offer free access to US circuit court opinions along with some facility to search for cases that cite particular US Code sections.
More commentary:
Denise Howell, Lawgarithms @ ZDNet.com, » Changing the way we find, reference, and talk about the law: ” In the long term, when the successors of public.resource.org and Tim Wu’s AltLaw ultimately make public case and statutory law searchable and cut-and-pasteable, and things like pagination morph into things like URIs, that’s a wrap for services like Westlaw and Lexis. Unless they figure out ways to do it first, better, and for free — but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Brett Frischmann, madisonian.net, The world’s first free, public domain legal search engine: “Why hasn’t Google done with cases what it’s done with patents and books? Is that on the horizon? Has it been done already and I just don’t know?”
At Above the Law, David Lat gets the scoop of the year– Nixon Peadbody’s motivational song: Someone Deserves to be Shot Over This
Nixon Peabody: This Is Not a Love Theme Song: “[Nixon Peadbody representatives] emphasized that the song was internal to the firm and is protected by copyright. They also insisted that it is NOT a “theme song” — in any way, shape or form.”
Unfortunately (or perhaps thankfully), as ATL commenters note, some state disciplinary rules prevent attorneys from using theme songs as part of lawyer advertising. But, wouldn’t jury duty be more entertaining if trial lawyers did have theme songs? Of course, court would feel more like a baseball game, but it might entice citizens to want to serve on juries if the US Attorneys would give their opening statements after a few bars of “America, F^ck Yeah,” or a Manhattan ADA’s cross examination followed a bit of “New York, New York.”
I’ve just updated the blog software to Movable Type 4.0 and in attempting to update to the new templates, may have broken everything. Let’s see…
So far, I have managed to break everything. Victory!
Getting closer…
8/24: The update is not quite done, but the site seems to work well enough to post to the blog more or less. But the “permalinks” are all broken and they will be until after the weekend.
Here’s a big bunch of unfiltered links about copyright-related topics that I have accumulated over the last couple of months. Most of these deserve more discussion, but are getting the short end of the stick.
Erik J. Heels, Drawing That Explains Copyright Law
Detroit News, Eminem suit targets Apple: “A ‘burning issue’ in the music industry today is whether the rights record labels hold to sell a recording artist’s CDs include the rights to authorize music downloads, or whether further permission is needed from the music publishers who hold the copyrights to the lyrics and sheet music.”
The Patry Copyright Blog, Bands and Partnerships: “It is common for bands to form a corporation or other juridical entity like a partnership. When preexisting works are transferred to such an entity, the ordinary provisions on individual ownership, duration, and termination of transfer apply. But what about works created after the juridical entity is created? This issue is presented, but not considered, in Lopez v. Musinorte Entertainment Corp., 2007 WL 579746 (9th Feb. 16, 2007).”
News.com, TorrentSpy lawyer battling ‘copyright extremism’: “Ira Rothken is technology’s answer to the radical lawyer, Silicon Valley’s version of Johnnie Cochran or William Kunstler. Tech start-ups sued by media conglomerates for copyright infringement typically call on Rothken, a medical researcher turned lawyer. He’s made a name for himself by bucking entertainment empires and by backing long-shot copyright cases, such as those involving RecordTV, ReplayTV and MP3Board.com.”
Coolfer: DRM: Who Wants What?
The Daily Swarm, Getty Images is listening through Paper Thin Walls: “Late last month, Getty Images – one of the leading visual image distributors that provides readily licensable photographs, video, artwork, and other creative content to websites and print publications around the world – announced the $42 million acquisition of Pump Audio, an online clearinghouse of pre-cleared music and sounds.”
Fred von Lohmann, EFF, YouTube Embedding and Copyright: “I’d say bloggers are generally pretty safe on this score, at least until someone notifies them that an embedded video is infringing.”
Law.com, Federal Judge Clears Law Firm Accused of Hacking Opponents’ Web Archives: “A law firm did not violate copyright and computer anti-hacking laws when it used a Web archive search tool to recover old Web pages of its client’s adversary, says a federal judge.…’They did not ‘pick the lock’ and avoid or bypass the protective measure, because there was no lock to pick,’ Kelly wrote in Healthcare Advocates Inc. v. Harding Earley Follmer & Frailey, No. 05-3524. ‘Nor did the Harding firm steal passwords to get around a protective barrier. … The Harding firm could not ‘avoid’ or ‘bypass’ a digital wall that was not there.'”
Rufus Pollock, Forever Minus a Day? Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright: “The optimal level for copyright has been a matter for extensive debate over the last decade. This paper contributes several new results on this issue divided into two parts. In the first, a parsimonious theoretical model is used to prove several novel propositions about the optimal level of protection. Specifically, we demonstrate that (a) optimal copyright falls as the costs of production go down (for example as a result of digitization) and that (b) the optimal level of copyright will, in general, fall over time.”
Jeff Neuburger, Technology Law Update: Seventh Circuit YouTube Reference Thwarted by Major League Baseball: “Judge Evans closes his account of the incident with a citation to a video of the incident available on YouTube. Naturally we had to check out the video. But alas! The url returns an error message: ‘This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by MLB Advanced Media.'”
Los Angeles Times, Can the music industry sue its way to profit?: “The entertainment industry’s legal successes against Napster, Grokster, etc., have failed to slow plummeting sales. How will cracking down on web radio be any different? Publisher Kurt Hanson and attorney Jay Rosenthal debate the economics of online music”
Los Angeles Times, AT&T to target pirated content: “The San Antonio-based company started working last week with studios and record companies to develop anti-piracy technology that would target the most frequent offenders, said James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president.”
Law.com, Citing Supreme Court Precedent, 11th Circuit Reverses Major Copyright Ruling: “In a decision called ‘curious’ by an intellectual property expert, a federal appellate panel in Atlanta has reversed its circuit’s 6-year-old opinion in a major copyright case, declaring the ruling’s mandate on behalf of freelance photographers to be ‘moot.'”
John Borland, Wired, See Who’s Editing Wikipedia – Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign: “On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company’s machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.”
The data is available to search at List anonymous wikipedia edits from interesting organizations.
How do you properly attribute authorship to a collective work? Or does that go against the wiki-ethos, even if it means that articles are less likely to have a “neutal viewpoint.” If the Wikimedia Foundation ever needs to raise money, it could auction the rights “last edits” for articles for a certain period of time to the highest bidder. If such biased edits were published with attribution, those astroturf articles might be more honest and attributable sources than the more subtly biased “neutral viewpoint” articles.
This anecdote from law student blogger Above Supra perfectly captures the problem with Wikipedia as a source. DIY Sources:
“The other day I was working on my draft of an amicus brief. I had to begin by explaining some fundamentals of the internet, such as describing the difference between a static and dynamic IP address (I’ve changed the facts to protect the innocent). I’ve read cases where the judge footnoted to a Wikipedia article, so I checked out the Wiki definition of the terms I wanted to use. As it happened, the definitions didn’t adequately cover the issue.
“What did I do? Naturally, I signed into my Wiki account and edited the entry. Only then did the absurdity of citing to a ‘customizable source’ hit home.
“Needless to say, I didn’t use Wikipedia as a source for the brief.”
In a 2006 paper, Ken Myers discusses fitting Wikipedia into the §230 safe harbor, Wikimmunity: Fitting the Communications Decency Act to Wikipedia: “In the wake of the Seigenthaler biography controversy, many commentators suggested that Wikipedia should be able to escape liability for defamatory content pursuant to the immunity provided for in 47 U.S.C. Section 230(c)(1), enacted by Congress as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Unfortunately, those commentators do not provide a detailed roadmap to that conclusion.”
Some more examples of what happens to internet-based communications when they filter through various points of control.
In the Machinist blog at Salon, Farhad Manjoo reports on British ISPs attempting to shake down the BBC, Is network neutrality a fake issue? Not if you want to watch the BBC: “As several British papers reported over the weekend, large ISPs have threatened to shut down people’s access to the BBC’s online videos — unless, of course, the BBC pays the ISPs a fee.”
AT&T’s censorship of “controversial political speech” in a Pearl Jam concert was apparently not an isolated incident. The Daily Swarm is collecting reports of other streams of performances where AT&T edited poltical speech out of webcasts, The Blue Room: Who else did AT&T censor?
Eliot Van Buskirk is also covering the story in detail at his Wired blog: Crew Member: Previous AT&T Show Had “No Politics” Policy: “A crew member who worked on a show webcast by AT&T confirmed that there was a policy in place to remove artists’ political comments from shows before they were webcast.”
The Los Angeles Times reports, AT&T apologizes for censoring performer webcasts: “In response to fans who claimed that the audio silencing of Vedder’s sung remarks about Bush at Lollapalooza were not unique in the history of AT&T’s Blue Room live webcasts, an AT&T spokeswoman on Friday said: ‘It’s not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts on the attblueroom.com. Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to ensure that it won’t happen again.'”
In an imperfectly competitive world without regulation, network providers have the power to not only choose to restrict certain political speech, but also to affect competition in related markets. At NewTeeVee, Jackson West discusses the problem that p2p online video network Joost faces in the US– lack of bandwidth The Joost Problem: American ‘Broadband’: “The fundamental problem that Joost faces is the fact that the broadband available to North American households simply isn’t fast enough for them to provide image quality comparable to digital cable or satellite, much less high-definition video.” And while broadband providers might add bandwidth, they might also have the incentive to discriminate against other bandwidth-intensive content providers who compete with their own offerings. After all, bandwidth isn’t cheap. West continues, “Why should companies like Comcast offer the kind of high speed broadband enjoyed in Europe and Asia when it would simply enable companies like Joost to compete with the company’s own digital video offerings?”
Tim Wu, Wireless Net Neutrality: Cellular Carterfone on Mobile Networks: “The wireless industry, over the last decade, has succeeded in bringing wireless telephony at competitive prices to the American public. Yet at the same time we also find the wireless carriers aggressively controlling product design and innovation in the equipment and application markets, to the detriment of consumers. Their policies, in the wired world, would be considered outrageous, in some cases illegal, and in some cases simply misguided.”
Tim Wu, Slate Magazine, Why the iPhone isn’t really revolutionary: “The iPhone’s style and user interface are pathbreaking, and (as the iPod proved) aesthetics do matter. But the iPhone is—so far—not a product that will turn any industry inside out. Seen as a phone, the iPhone is striking. Seen as a small computer, it’s limited, and compromised by the existing business models of the wireless industry. Saying the iPhone is a pointless gadget is a bit too strong. But it isn’t yet a revolutionary device.”
The New York Times, When Mobile Phones Aren’t Truly Mobile: “WIRELESS carriers in the United States are spiritual descendants of dear Ma Bell: they view total control over customers as their inherited birthright.”
Susan Crawford blog, The iPhone hearing: “This morning the House Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Markey (D-MA), is holding a hearing about a range of wireless issues: the role of states in providing consumer protection in this market, and the role of Congress and the FCC in protecting innovation. Markey’s focused in particular on early termination fees and portability generally. He’s also concerned that the carriers are exerting too much control over the features and functions of wireless devices. ”
The Wall Street Journal reports about the trademark problem Joseph Abboud faces when he goes into competition with Joseph Abbod: What’s in a Name? Not Much, He Hopes: “When designer Joseph Abboud announces his new menswear label today, he’ll face an unlikely competitor: Joseph Abboud. The 57-year-old designer, whose penchant for earth tones and textured fabrics made him a favorite of professional men in the 1990s, sold his trademark for $65 million in 2000. So when he launches his new line, which will include $3,000 shearling coats, he won’t be able to use his name. Instead he’s chosen the name jaz, which he says is a riff on jazz.”
Susan Scafidi, Counterfeit Chic, A Rose By Any Other Name: “Still, why do so many fashion designers, in particular, risk having their names amputated? Surely the pleasure of seeing the letters printed on a few inches of ribbon isn’t that compelling.”
First, they copied the lobster rolls, next, the burgers. Jason Perlow finds another case of a restaurant cloning the total look and feel of another, more established competitor. Off The Broiler, Burger Battle In North Jersey: “What I encountered shocked and rocked me to the core. Yes, it’s independently owned. Yes, the burgers are decent. However, I didn’t count on the place flat out, unabashedly and unashamedly copying another recently opened burger restaurant, Five Guys in Hackensack, an excellent chain burger franchise originating from the Washington DC area. And when I mean copy, I don’t just mean stylistically copying the food. I mean copying it right down to the restaurant decor, the uniforms of the staff, the menu, the food presentation, everything.”
AT&T sponsored a webcast of the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago last weekend. But, AT&T’s “content monitor” decided to cut parts of a song where Pearl Jam made reference to the President. Pearl Jam, Lollapalooza Webcast: Sponsored/Censored by AT&T?: “
When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.
During the performance of ‘Daughter’ the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ but were cut from the webcast:
– ‘George Bush, leave this world alone.’ (the second time it was sung); and
– ‘George Bush find yourself another home.’
This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media.”
Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge discusses this as a problem of trust and the dangers of allowing internet access providers to prioritize the bits moving through their networks– speech is always a casualty. Public Knowledge Calls AT&T Censoring of Pearl Jam ‘Appalling’: “How can we trust a company that promises not to interfere with content on the Internet when it has its corporate finger on the button to cut off political criticisms it doesn’t like? The admitted censoring of a Pearl Jam performance is just one more reason why content should be protected against the actions of a company looking out for itself, rather than for consumers and the free flow of information over the Internet.”
David Isenberg considers that this is a perfect example of the different ways that net neutrality advocates and telecom providers view and frame the concept of a neutral internet. Net neutrality advocates see it as an issue of free speech. Telecom providers see it as an issue of the freedom to conduct business. AT&T Censors Pearl Jam . . . and?: “”We Netheads must understand that to the telcos and cablecos, its all about the money. Talking to them about First Amendment Rights don’t mean squat. To them, its all about the money. As long as it is in their interests to discriminate — to charge what the market will bear on each transaction — discrimination will create barriers to free speech and innovation. Because to them, it is all about the money.”
Derek Slater, EFF, How Ma Bell Fought for Your Privacy – 80 Years Ago: “Once upon a time, nearly eighty years ago, AT&T fought at the Supreme Court to stop the government’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private communications. How times have changed.”
These are links I’ve come across in the last couple of months about derivative works and fair use:
Dan Brekke, Salon.com, Tangled up in Seuss: “Ryan took the text from seven Seuss classics, including ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham,’ and set them to original tunes that sounded like they were right off Dylan’s mid-’60s releases. He played all the instruments and sang all the songs in Dylan’s breathy, nasal twang. He registered a domain name, dylanhearsawho.com, and in February posted his seven tracks online, accompanied by suitably Photoshopped album artwork, under the title ‘Dylan Hears a Who.'”
Derek Bambauer, Info/Law, Abolishing the Derivative Works Right in Copyright, Or, Why Legalizing “The Grey Album” Makes Economic Sense: “From an economic perspective, giving copyright holders the right to control production of derivative works – works that transform their expression, such as the movie version of a novel – is unjustified, even harmful. Current scholarship either defends this entitlement as economically sensible or partially reconfigures it. This article assesses the dominant economic rationales for derivative control, and finds them weak at best. Unlike other copyright scholarship, this piece argues that since the right prevents production of attractive, diverse, cheaper new expression, and blocks the promise of re-mix culture, it should be eliminated.”
NY Times: MST3K: The Final Frontier: “Mike Nelson, the show’s longtime host and head writer, has begun a new venture called RiffTrax, and he can now skewer virtually any movie without infringing on copyrights. Recordings of him talking back at movies can be downloaded (for fees ranging from 99 cents to $3.99) from rifftrax.com. Start playing the DVD or VHS version of the movie and Mr. Nelson’s commentary simultaneously, and the effect is that of a director commenting on a DVD — except that Mr. Nelson is inclined to say, as he does during a scene in ‘Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’ in which William Shatner climbs a mountain, ‘He’s actually trying to scale his own ego.'”
Ron Coleman, Likelihood of Confusion: One cease and desist letter I won’t be sending: “What makes mass murderers and war criminals fear the Wrath of Wally?”
Barton Beebe, An Empirical Study of U.S. Copyright Fair Use Opinions, 1978-2005: “Working from a data set consisting of all reported federal opinions that made substantial use of the Section 107 four-factor test for fair use through 2005, the Article shows which factors and subfactors actually drive the outcome of the fair use test in practice, how the fair use factors interact, how courts inflect certain individual factors, and the extent to which judges stampede the factor outcomes to conform to the overall test outcome. It also presents empirical evidence of the extent to which lower courts either deliberately ignored or were ignorant of the doctrine of the leading cases, particularly those from the Supreme Court.”
Julie Hilden, Findlaw, Perez Hilton, Michelle Malkin, and the “Fair Use” Exception to Copyright Law: What Are the Rules When Bloggers Use Video Excerpts and Photographs Without Permission?: “Recently, two prominent bloggers — political pundit Michelle Malkin and celebrity gossip purveyor Perez Hilton (not to be confused with Paris Hilton) — have been involved in battles over the scope of the exception for ‘fair use’ of copyrighted material.”
Here are three recent studies about the state of broadband in the US and the world. The short takeaway is that the US is a second-tier country– at best– as far as information infrastructure. That is largely due to the fact that the market for broadband is not competitive in the US. If it is at all available to them, Americans typically obtain broadband service from the incumbent cable company and the incumbent phone company at speeds that are little better than they were 5 years ago.
Internet Innovation Alliance Broadband Factbook
OECD: OECD Communications Outlook 2007
FTC Staff Report: Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy
Susan Crawford, Moving Slowly in the Fast Lane: “The Federal Communications Commission, our national communications regulatory body, is asking the wrong questions and heading in the wrong direction. We need new leadership in this country that has the political muscle to implement radical change. A key national priority, on a par with funding Head Start programs and adequate national healthcare, must be to ensure that access to an unfettered internet is universal, speedy, and cheap.”
Newsweek: True or False: U.S.’s Broadband Penetration Is Lower Than Even Estonia’s: “Maybe our proud nation is going through some rough spots, but at least we have one shining and perpetual triumph: the Internet. People may refer to it as the World Wide Web, but its capital is Silicon Valley and the United States is the big dog tapping the global keyboard. At least that’s what we thought, until the news broke in April of a report by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that ranked the high-speed broadband adoption of 30 countries in the developed world. The United States was not first. Or second, or third. It ranked 15th.”
David Weinberger: Delaminate the Bastards!: “Once upon a time, when this nation’s telecommunications infrastructure was owned by a monopolistic industry, all the phones were black, long distance was incredibly expensive, and if you had a great idea for an innovative service using the telephone system, you were free to write a letter to the telephone company and suggest they look into it. About once a decade, the telephone company would introduce something new — touch tone phones, 800 numbers, and, yes, the pink Princess Phone for the ladies.”
David H. Deans: U.S. Broadband: Is it Half Empty, or Half Full?: “Is the U.S. broadband glass half-empty, or half-full? You decide. The 12 percent growth rate from 2006 to 2007 trails the 40 percent increase in the 2005 to 2006 timeframe, when many people in the middle-income and older age groups acquired home broadband connections.”
Save the Internet Blog: Painting over Broadband Failures with Pretty Pictures: “The near absolute control of phone and cable giants is being bolstered by a Washington establishment that’s loath to upset this imbalance of power. The results are now beginning to show in survey after survey that reveal nationwide broadband failures.”
Eric Bangeman, ars technica: New OECD report shows limitations of US broadband public policy: “The countries with the lowest cost per megabit per second are generally characterized by two things: a significant fiber infrastructure and a healthy amount of competition. In Japan and Korea, for instance, fiber is widespread, resulting in the fastest residential broadband speeds available anywhere. In Europe, the regulatory environment allows consumers in many countries to choose from any number of DSL and cable providers.”
John B. Horrigan, Pew Internet and American Life Project: Why it will Be Hard to Close the Broadband Divide: “ccording to the Pew Internet Project’s February 2007 survey, 47% of American adults have broadband at home, nearly double the 24% penetration level of three years earlier. With home broadband penetration poised to surpass 50% this year, it will have taken 9 years from the time the service became widely available for home high-speed to reach half the population. To put this in context, it took 10 years for the compact disc player to reach 50% of consumers, 15 years for cell phones, and 18 years for color TV”
But the piece de resistance is this article from Spiegel, which illustrates the difference between the US and France. France encouraged competition and required incumbent carriers to allow competitors access to lines. The result is that France has faster broadband available at lower cost and competitive carriers are not simply riding on the incumbent providers facilities, but actually investing in new competitive facilities. France’s Broadband Boom: Vive la High-Speed Internet!: “What a difference a few years make. In 2001, France had one of the weakest markets for broadband Internet access in the developed world, with less than a quarter of the penetration of the U.S. Today, it has sailed past the U.S. to become one of the world’s most wired nations, with more than one in five inhabitants enjoying high-speed Internet connections.”
How can the US catch up to the rest of the world? By encouraging competition in the broadband market. That is the goal that broadband policy should be striving to achieve– not the Bush Administration’s policy of protecting incumbents from competition, but promoting real competition.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group representing technology companies, filed a complaint with the FCC alleging that selected copyright owners– including the NFL, Major League Baseball, NBC and Dreamworks– engage in unfair and deceptive trade practices (in violation of §5 of the Federal Trade Act) by including aggresive copyright notices that misstate the boundaries of fair use in copyrighted works. In re: Misrepresentation of Consumer Fair Use and Related Rights:
“This complaint concerns the systematic misrepresentation of consumers’ rights to use legally acquired content by certain copyright-holding corporations. These corporations have engaged, and continue to engage in, a nationwide pattern of unfair and deceptive trade practices by misrepresenting consumer rights under copyright law, and in some cases threatening criminal and civil penalties against consumers who choose to exercise statutorily or Constitutionally guaranteed rights. These false representations violate the letter and spirit of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition against unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”
Wall Street Journal, Google, Others Contest Copyright Warnings: “Today, the Computer and Communications Industry Association — a group representing companies including Google Inc., Microsoft Inc. and other technology heavyweights — plans to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that several content companies, ranging from sports leagues to movie studios to book publishers, are overstepping bounds with their warnings. The group wants the FTC to investigate and order copyright holders to stop wording warnings in what it sees as a misrepresentative way.”
Jacqueline Palank, New York Times, Content Makers Are Accused of Exaggerating Copyright: “In a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, the group, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, said that the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NBC and Universal Studios, DreamWorks, Harcourt and Penguin Group display copyright warnings that are a ‘systematic misrepresentation of consumers’ rights to use legally acquired content.'”
(8/6 update)
The 463 Group’s blog has a brief interview with CCIA’s Will Rodger, 3Qs: Will Rodger, CCIA — Starting a Fair Fight
Matthew Saunders, Legal Fixation, CCIA’s fair use push: “But what if I don’t know what fair use is? I guess I follow that “fair use” link. And where does that link take me? To a plain text version of Section 107, including historical revision notes. Well heck, now it’s perfectly clear!”
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Cold Stone– bleeauggh!
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The Peter Lugers Index?
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Excuse me while I fidget
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Yippe-ki-yay…
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web to-do list
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Remotely access a mac on an iphone
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The bottled water industry
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Interesting idea
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An oral history of The Simpsons
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Don’t top-respond to emails
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Why wouldn’t it be cheaper and less bureaucratic than the mess we have now?
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This is the first of a series of posts that will serve to clear out the hundreds of web pages I’ve kept around in the last couple of months to blog about. Here are some links about the happenings relating to virtual worlds.
NY Times: Foundation With Real Money Ventures Into Virtual World: “For the first time, one of the nation’s largest foundations is venturing into virtual worlds to play host to activities and discussions and explore the role that philanthropy might play there. The foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is sponsoring events in Second Life, the online world.”
Virtually Blind: Rampant Trademark Infringment in Second Life Costs Millions, Undermines Future Enforcement: “The dirtiest little legal secret of Second Life isn’t virtual escorts, illegal gambling, ponzi schemes, or even money laundering — that stuff gets splashed across the front page whenever the mainstream media needs a scary headline on virtual worlds. No, the secret is this: misappropriation of major corporations’ trademarks in-world is so ubiquitous, so safe, and so immensely profitable, that it has become a wholly transparent part of Second Life’s commercial landscape.”
Reuters: Protecting real brand names in a virtual world: “Fake Prada purses and knock-off Rolexes are usually sold on street corners, out of trenchcoats or the trunks of cars. But on Second Life, counterfeit goods can be found even in the swankiest malls and department stores.”
Reuters: <a href=“http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/07/03/sl-business-sues-for-copyright-infringement/"SL business sues for copyright infringement: ” Second Life entrepreneur Kevin Alderman filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Tuesday against Second Life resident Volkov Catteneo, and Alderman’s lawyer said he plans to subpoena Linden Lab to force it to disclose Catteneo’s real-world identity.”
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why I gave up on Second Life: “Like everyone else, I had fun exploring the concept and marveling at all the creativity. Then I got bored, and I started marveling at something else: all the empty corporate edifices. By day I’d speak at marketing conferences that usually had someone pitching SL services, complete with staged demonstrations (the ‘inhabitants’ invariably paid employees). By night I’d go back to the same places, which had reverted to ghost towns once the demonstration was over. I couldn’t understand why companies kept throwing money at in-world presences. Were they seeing something I wasn’t?”
Wired: How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life: “As worldwide head of interactive marketing at Coca-Cola, Donnelly was fascinated by its commercial potential, the way its users could wander through a computer-generated 3-D environment that mimics the mundane world of the flesh. So one day last fall, he downloaded the Second Life software, created an avatar, and set off in search of other brands like his own. American Apparel, Reebok, Scion — the big ones were easy to find, yet something felt wrong: ‘There was nobody else around.’ He teleported over to the Aloft Hotel, a virtual prototype for a real-world chain being developed by the owners of the W. It was deserted, almost creepy. ‘I felt like I was in The Shining.'”
Law.com: Lawyers Find Real Revenue in Virtual World: “And while Second Life might initially seem like make-believe or child’s play, the firm is filing real trademark applications, landing real clients and making real money through the virtual world. By Lieberman’s reckoning, the firm has pulled in nearly $20,000 in revenue from its Second Life office in the past year. Not exactly enough to make the D.C. 20, but impressive, given that overhead is almost nil.”
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The LOLcats Bard
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Scott Turow discusses the problems with billing hours
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And yes, The Simpsons has been airing for multiple eras by now…
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Lots of information about events following “Deathly Hallows” (with spoilers!)
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/harrypotter">harrypotter</a>)
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“That’s why you’re the judge and I’m the law-talking guy.”
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(How I Met Your Mother)
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Reuters Tour de France photographers run into a bit of trouble while covering the race
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It’s not quite an iPhone version of NetNewsWire, but as close as we’re going to get for now…
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Useful starting resource guide
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It’s the ask Steve Albini forum!
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President Bush Visits Nashville, Discusses Budget (Doesn’t know that artists and labels earn no royalties from terrestrial radio broadcasts, unlike songwriters and publishers.)
Q Mr. President, music is one of our largest exports the country has.
Currently, every country in the world — except China, Iran, North
Korea, Rwanda and the United States — pay a statutory royalty to the
performing artists for radio and television air play. Would your
administration consider changing our laws to align it with the rest
of the world?
THE PRESIDENT: Help. (Laughter.) Maybe you’ve never had a President
say this — I have, like, no earthly idea what you’re talking about.
(Laughter and applause.) Sounds like we’re keeping interesting
company, you know? (Laughter.)
Look, I’ll give you the old classic: contact my office, will you?
(Laughter.) I really don’t — I’m totally out of my lane. I like
listening to country music, if that helps. (Laughter.)
Maybe creating a performance royalty may not be a bad idea if radio listeners do buy less music than non-radio listeners. The NY Times reports, Radio Listeners Seem to Buy Less Music: “Very roughly, an hour’s worth of radio listening per person per day, over the course of a year, corresponded with a 0.75 drop in the number of albums purchased per capita in a given city.”
Here’s the full paper on SSRN: Stan Liebowitz, The Elusive Symbiosis: The Impact of Radio on the Record Industry (March 2004)
“The reason for the weaker copyright protection on sound recordings relative to movies appears to be that radio broadcasters have argued, and it is generally accepted, that radio play benefits record sales and thus there is less need for radio broadcasters to purchase the rights to broadcast the sound recording. This impact of radio play on record sales is commonly referred to as a ‘symbiotic’ relationship between these two industries and is often mentioned by radio broadcasters as a reason for keeping rates low, at hearings to set copyright payments. Yet there appears to be no systematic examination of this relationship. In this paper I present evidence indicating that radio play does not appear to benefit overall record sales.”
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The greatest game ever
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The biggest hurdle– clearing the music rights
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Snazzy
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Could Apple be held liable for infringing material on YouTube that is displayed through the YouTube viewing application on the iPhone? News.com: Could YouTube drag Apple into copyright fight? : “[Robert Tur is] irked at Apple now because the new iPhone has a feature that allows users to view YouTube videos.”
How is Apple’s liability for infringing videos on YouTube viewed on the iPhone any different than its liability for infringing videos viewed on a Mac? Or Microsoft and Dell? Heck, we can add in Sony, because its DVD players could be used to watch pirated movies!
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More than meets the fine print
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Can’t hold out much longer
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Here is the complaint in the Pearl Oyster Bar v. Ed’s Lobster Bar suit:
Powerful Katinka, Inc. v. McFarland
Ed’ Lobster Bar copies each and every element of Pearl. Ed’s Lobster Bar’s meny consists almost entirely of dishes created by Charles that currently appear or have appeared on the Pearl menu or which were prepared for special events while McFarland worked at Pearl. On information and belief, Ed’s Lobster Bar prepares and plates the dishes in the same manner as Charles does at Pearl. Moreover, Ed’s Lobster Bar serves Pearl’s food in a virtually identical setting. Ed’s Lobster Bar totally mimics the look and feel of Pearl as well in its color scheme, eschewing of reservations, lighting, bar area, seating, service style, and streamlined menu and wine list. Even the batroom and wait stations at Ed’s Lobster Bar are clones of Pearl’s.
The look and feel claim is based in §43(a) of the Lanham Act. The complaint details the similarities in trade dress:
The complaint alleges that there is actual consumer confusion, citing a number of reviews from the internet. In addition, menus and photos of Pearl, Ed’s and competing restaurants are attached to demonstrate that it is possible to create a different restaurant based on the same inspiration.
One of the interesting aspects of the complaint is the argument that a Sous chef is a fiduciary of the restaurant. McFarland had asked Charles to become a partner and open more incarnations of Pearls, and she had declined. But by taking the menu, style and recipes from Pearl and using them to create a competing restaurant, Pearl alleges that McFarland breached his duty as a fiduciary of the restaurant.
Previously: Lobster Rolls and the Lanham Act
On my way home today, I walked by hundreds of people waiting in line at Apple and AT&T stores. The iPhone line snaked all the way down Greene to Houston, along Houston and then halfway up Mercer. Prince St was filled with photographers taking photos of the purchasers (including Whoopi Goldberg) and people gawking at the line.
The first people to plunk down upwards of $500 for a iPhone had been waiting in line for days.
Why? Is it just the Jobs Reality Distortion Field at work?
The obvious answer comes from basic microeconomics. Demand exceeding supply. Until 6 PM today, the supply of iPhones in the world was 0 while lots and lots of people (including me) wanted one. At 6 PM, the supply started to exist and the market is quickly adapting and supplying the customers.
That assumes that there is enough supply to meet the demand. If you were not in line early, you may not be able to buy an iPhone at all this weekend. It might take weeks or months to resupply after the launch.
But even if there is enough stock at the Apple stores to meet demand, I’m sure that people would have lined up early. An Apple release is an event. A while back, I walked by a line snaking around the block at the Apple store in NYC for the release of a new version of the Mac OS– one that could have been pre-ordered online.
For some consumer electronics, demand still outstrips supply. Just a couple of weeks ago, David Berkowitz waited in line for a Wii at the Nintendo store. For some consumer electronics, demand still outstrips supply. Just a couple of weeks ago, David Berkowitz waited in line for a Wii at the Nintendo store.
In Soviet Russia, people queued up for bread because the demand for bread regularly exceeded the supply. In Manhattan, people wait in line for up to an hour for a burger at Shake Shack.
(credit: A Hamburger Today)
In 2004, Star Wars fans waited on line– many in costume– at the Ziegfeld theater for Star Wars Episode II. Yes, they waited in line after seeing the awful Episode I. Admittedly, it was a fundraiser for charity, but just as much a celebration of the fan community.
I suspect that waiting in line is not merely a way of allocating goods, but just as much for the shared experience and feeling part of a community.
Have you heard that Apple is releasing a phone today?
When the first iPod was released, six years ago, the first Slashdot reaction read, “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.” The early reviews of the iPhone are in and they’re very positive for Apple’s contribution. The device itself, despite some flaws, is brilliant. But the critics are not quite as generous towards AT&T’s contribution– the voice and data cell network. Here’s a handy scorecard from Valleywag
In the WSJ, Walt Mossberg writes, “The iPhone has a major drawback: the cellphone network it uses. It only works with AT&T… it uses a pokey network called EDGE, which is far slower than the fastest networks from Verizon or Sprint that power many other smart phones.”
The NY Times’s David Pogue: “Then there’s the Internet problem. When you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, going online is fast and satisfying. But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo. two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem.”
But I’m not sure what the big problem is. After all, under the FCC’s definition, AT&T’s 300 kbps EDGE network qualifies as broadband. For the last 12 years, the Commission has continued to define a broadband connection as one capable of 200 kbps or more in one direction.
A new report released this week from the Communications Workers of America finds that the US has fallen out of the first tier of connectivity. “The median download speed for the 50 states and the District of Columbia was 1.9 megabits per second (mbps). In Japan, the median download speed is 61 mbps, or 30 times faster than the U.S. The U.S. also trails South Korea at 45 mbps, Finland at 21 mbps, Sweden at 18 mbps, and Canada at 7.6 mbps.”
If upload speeds (which is what individuals use when speaking, sending and publishing to the rest of the internet) were averaged in, the US would fall even further behind, as most cable and DSL broadband connections are asymmetrical. The median upload speed for internet users in the US is 371 kbps– only 19% as fast as the median download speed. Broadband connections in the US are deployed for consumption, not speech. If the FCC definition were modified to require the paltry 200 kbps connection speed in both directions, many US broadband connections would no longer be classified to be broadband.
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Rebecca Charles, the chef of Pearl Oyster Bar is suing Ed McFarlane and Ed’s Lobster Bar for creating a restaurant that nearly clones Pearl.
Chef Sues Over Intellectual Property (the Menu)
“Yesterday she filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan against the latest and, she said, the most brazen of her imitators: Ed McFarland, chef and co-owner of Ed’s Lobster Bar in SoHo and her sous-chef at Pearl for six years.
“The suit, which seeks unspecified financial damages from Mr. McFarland and the restaurant itself, charges that Ed’s Lobster Bar copies “each and every element” of Pearl Oyster Bar, including the white marble bar, the gray paint on the wainscoting, the chairs and bar stools with their wheat-straw backs, the packets of oyster crackers placed at each table setting and the dressing on the Caesar salad.”
Serious Eats: Rebecca Charles is Mad as Hell and She’s Not Going to Take It Anymore: “‘I’ve looked the other way for years,’ Rebecca said. ‘I understand that chefs take dishes from the restaurants they worked in when they open their own restaurants. But Ed’s Lobster Bar is much more than a knock-off. It’s an exact duplicate of Pearl. Thirty-one of the 34 dishes on his menu are simply lifted from Pearl. The stools, the look and feel of the place, everything is exactly the same. It’s offensive. Plus he lied to me. He told me and the staff when he quit that he was leaving to open an Italian seafood restaurant. I said great. I even offered to help him. Then, six weeks later, he opens Ed’s.'”
McFarlane was sous-chef at Pearl Oyster Bar for six years before leaving Pearl to start Ed’s and much of the press coverage of the Ed’s opening mentioned the Pearl heritage.
Pearl Oyster Bar is derivative of the New England clam shack, albeit with Manhattan prices. Ed’s is not the first restaurant to follow a similar formula. Previously, Charles’ partner left acrimoniously to start Mary’s Fish Camp– a direct competitor– across the street.
But, Mary’s menu differs from Pearl’s offering more dishes and slightly different preparations. To Charles, Ed’s appears to be a clone of Pearl rather than a derivative working from the same source material. Charles asserts that some recipes at Ed’s– the Caesar salad, in particular– are based on trade secrets acquired while McFarlane worked at Pearl.
In Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that trade dress in a restaurant is projectable if the trade dress is inherently distinctive. Note that there are a number of restaurants in NYC inspired by New England clam shacks and they seem to adopt somewhat different look and feel than Pearl. Is there a likelihood of confusion here? If the details are in fact so similar, confusion could be likely.
Serious Eats: Is Imitation Always the Sincerest Form of Flattery?
Today, a large coalition of webcasters, including small hobby operations to large sites– including Yahoo, MTV, Pandora, Rhapsody, Live365, WOXY and KCRW — are going silent for the day to bring attention to new royalty rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board that are set to go into effect on July 15. For many of the smaller commercial webcasters to continue to webcast the same content would cost more in license fees than their total revenues.
RAIN: Massive listener support cripples servers, switchboards: “An overwhelming response by listeners to today’s ongoing ‘Day of Silence’ event has overwhelmed the web and database servers being used by SaveNetRadio.org and is tying up switchboards in Congressional offices all over Capitol Hill as a deluge of online radio listeners have rushed to contact their representatives to ask them to co-sponsor the ‘Internet Radio Equality Act.'”
Mike Musgrove, Washington Post: Web Radio Stations Hope Silence Speaks Volumes About Fee Hike: “Many Web-based music services and some conventional radio stations that offer Internet audio streams are scheduled to shut off their online music and programming until midnight tonight. Organizers are calling it Day of Silence and are hoping it will focus attention on a royalty-fee increase that many Internet-based broadcasters say could drive them out of business.”
Felix Contreras, NPR Morning Edition Internet Radio Silently Protests Royalties: “Many fans of Internet radio will be tuning in to nothing Tuesday, as many Webcasters participate in ‘A National Day of Silence.'”
In Findlaw, RealNetworks’ Senior Counsel Cecily Mak A Look at Radio Silence: When Copyright Law Reform Goes Terribly Wrong: “The webcasters have an excellent point: Instead of increasing rates enough to properly compensate rights holders and encourage creation, the new rates are so unreasonably high that they are threatening the survival of an entire industry. Unless the new regulations are successfully repealed, the new rates will result in true perpetual ‘radio silence’ for thousands of online radio stations – a loss for rights holders, distributors and consumers alike.”
Deven Desai at Madisonian.net, Sound of Silence: “if nothing changes, on July 15, 2007, Internet radio stations will have to pay increased royalty rates such that many of the smaller and even some of the larger Internet radio stations will have to pay more than AM and FM stations. The increase appears to be large enough that many of the Internet radio stations might have to shut down. The whole system seems a mess.”
On Thursday, the House Small Business Committee will hold a hearing on Assessing the Impact of the Copyright Royalty Board Decision to Increase Royalty Rates on Recording Artists and Webcasters with testimony from:
Bryan Miller
La La Media, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA
Tom Silverman
Chairman
Tommy Boy Records
New York, NY
Joey Allcorn
Artist
Columbus, GA
Cathy Fink
Artist
Washington, DC
Kieran Kelly
Co-Owner
Stunning Models on Display Records
Astoria, NY
Thomas F. Lee
President
American Federation of Musicians
New York, NY
Richard Eisworth
President, General Manager & CEO
Cincinnati Public Radio
Cincinnati, OH
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Does your company have a lolcats strategy yet?
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True that, double true
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In-N-Out claims Utah burger joint is a ripoff. Is the use-in-commerce analysis affected by the fact that some of the marks are used on a secret menu?
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Rockstar:Supernova – the reality show with the highest ratio of lawsuits:ratings?
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When do I get in line?
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Before clickwrap, before shrinkwrap and before the Copyright Act of 1909, a record jacket with a license agreement: No license is granted to use this record when sold at a less price..
Julian Dibbell explores The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer in cyberspace: “It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him. The screen showed a lightly wooded mountain terrain, studded with castle ruins and grazing deer, in which warrior monks milled about. Li, or rather his staff-wielding wizard character, had been slaying the enemy monks since 8 p.m., mouse-clicking on one corpse after another, each time gathering a few dozen virtual coins — and maybe a magic weapon or two — into an increasingly laden backpack.”
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The most amazing book ever
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NY Times: Going to Court Over Fiction by a Fictitious Writer
After years of celebrity that included friendships with Winona Ryder and Madonna, articles in The New York Times and Vanity Fair, and many other gaudy trappings of early 21st century fame, JT Leroy was revealed to be the name not of a writer — in fact, not even of a person — but of the fictive alter ego of Laura Albert, a mother and otherwise obscure young novelist from Brooklyn Heights.
This intricate game of hide-and-seek with its interlocking issues of identity, fame, money and the healing power of art has now leapt from the media to what is arguably the culture’s second most obsessive arena: the courts. A film production company has sued Ms. Albert for fraud, saying that a contract signed with JT Leroy to make a feature film of “Sarah” should be null and void, for the simple reason that JT Leroy does not exist.
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Woke up this morning, got myself a wand…
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The Copyright Office has released a guide for teachers, Taking the Mystery Out of Copyright.
Where’s the verse on the visual artists rights act? The verse about the §115 compulsory license and the verse on royalty proceedings? How do you turn the protection against anti-circumvention measures into a catchy rhyme?
Something Awful: The Art of Wikigroaning: “First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called “Knight.” Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we’ll go with “Jedi Knight.” Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created. Are you looking yet? Get a good, long look. Yeah. Yeeaaah, we know, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.”
For example, compare:
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Awww.
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The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Federal Communications Commission’s policy prohibiting “fleeting expletives” is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act for “failing to articulate a reasoned basis for its change in policy.” Fox v. FCC, 06-1760 (2d Cir., Jun. 4, 2007).
“The Networks contend that the Remand Order is arbitrary and capricious because the FCC has made a 180-degree turn regarding its treatment of “fleeting expletives” without providing a reasoned explanation justifying the about-face. We agree.”
The evaluation of the Commission’s new policy is limited to the reasons articulated by the agency itself, particularly the “first blow” theory introduced in [Pacifica][2]. Based on the pervasiveness of the broadcast medium, a viewer or listener can not opt-out of indecent programming when encountering such programming in the spectrum, and so the audience must bear the “first blow” of encountering indecent speech. Because of this unique pervasiveness, the Commission changed its standards in order to be able to sanction fleeting and accidental indecency.
“We cannot accept [the “first blow” argument] as a reasoned basis justifying the Commission’s new rule. First, the Commission provides no reasonable explanation for why it has changed its perception that a fleeting expletive was not a harmful “first blow” for the nearly thirty years between Pacifica and Golden Globes. More problematic, however, is that the “first blow” theory bears no rational connection to the Commission’s actual policy regarding fleeting expletives. As the FCC itself stressed during oral argument in this case, the Commission does not take the position that any occurrence of an expletive is indecent or profane under its rules. For example, although “there is no outright news exemption from our indecency rules,” Remand Order, at ¶ 71, the Commission will apparently excuse an expletive when it occurs during a “bona fide news interview,” id. at ¶ 72-73 (deferring to CBS’s “plausible characterization” of a segment of The Early Show interviewing a contestant on its reality show Survivor: Vanuatu as news programming and finding expletive uttered during that part of the show not indecent or profane).
The Commission even conceded that a re-broadcast of precisely the same offending clips from the two Billboard Music Award programs for the purpose of providing background information on this case would not result in any action by the FCC, even though in those circumstances viewers would be subjected to the same “first blow”
that resulted from the original airing of this material. Furthermore, the Commission has also held that even repeated and deliberate use of numerous expletives is not indecent or profane under the FCC’s policy if the expletives are “integral” to the work.
The court finds that other justifications for the new indecency standard advanced by the FCC do not pass the threshold of being arbitrary and capricious:
The Remand Order makes passing reference to other reasons that purportedly support its change in policy, none of which we find sufficient. For instance, the Commission states that even non-literal uses of expletives fall within its indecency definition because it is “difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish whether a word is being used as an expletive or as a literal description of sexual or excretory functions.” Remand Order, at ¶ 23. This defies any common-sense understanding of these words, which, as the general public well knows, are often used in everyday conversation without any “sexual or excretory” meaning. Bono’s exclamation that his victory at the Golden Globe Awards was “really, really fucking brilliant” is a prime example of a non-literal use of the “F-Word” that has no sexual connotation. See Golden Globes (Bureau Decision), 18 F.C.C.R. 19859, at ¶ 5 (“As a threshold matter, the material aired during the ‘Golden Globe Awards’ program does not describe or depict sexual and excretory activities and organs . . . . Rather, the performer used the word ‘fucking’ as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation.”), rev’d by Golden Globes, 19 F.C.C.R. 4975 (2004). Similarly, as NBC illustrates in its brief, in recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced “sexual or excretory organs or activities.” See Br. of Intervenor NBC at 31-32 & n.3 (citing President Bush’s remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to “get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit” and Vice President Cheney’s widely-reported “Fuck yourself” comment to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate).
To change a long-standing policy without new legislation, must an agency show empirical evidence establishing the need for such a change?
For decades broadcasters relied on the FCC’s restrained approach to indecency regulation and its consistent rejection of arguments that isolated expletives were indecent. The agency asserts the same interest in protecting children as it asserted thirty years ago, but until the Golden Globes decision, it had never banned fleeting expletives. While the FCC is free to change its previously settled view on this issue, it must provide a reasoned basis for that change.
The court finds that the Commission’s new approach towards regulating profanity is more arbitrary and capricious than the new approach towards regulating indecency.
The Commission’s new approach to profanity is supported by even less analysis, reasoned or not. The Commission sets forth no independent reasons that would justify its newly-expanded definition of “profane” speech, aside from merely stating that its prior precedent does not prevent it from setting forth a new definition, see Golden Globes, 19 F.C.C.R. 4975, at ¶ 14. To the extent the Commission believes its arguments for expanding its indecency enforcement support its new policy regarding profanity, those arguments are rejected for the reasons stated above. Furthermore, the Commission fails to provide any explanation for why this separate ban on profanity is even necessary. Prior to 2004, the Commission never attempted to regulate “profane” speech. In fact, the Commission took the view that a separate ban on profane speech was unconstitutional. See 122 Cong. Rec. 33359, 33359, 33364-65 (1976) (recommending Congress delete “profane” from Section 1464 “[b]ecause of the serious constitutional problems involved”); FCC, The Public and Broadcasting, 1999 WL 391297 (June 1999) (“Profanity that does not fall under one of the above two categories [indecent or obscene] is fully protected by the First Amendment and cannot be regulated.”). The Commission again has not provided this court with a reasoned analysis of why it has undertaken this separate regulation of speech. Finally, the Commission provides no explanation of what harm this separate enforcement against profane speech addresses that is not already addressed by the FCC’s indecency and obscenity enforcement. Particularly considering that the scope of the FCC’s new profanity definition appears to be largely (if not completely) redundant with its indecency prohibition, this would seem to be an important question for the Commission to consider. The Remand Order, however, provides no indication that the Commission has engaged in any such analysis.
While the court does not the case based on First Amendment grounds, it does pointedly question whether this standard of indecency regulation is Constitutional. The court remands to the FCC for a reasoned explanation for the “fleeting expletive” regime and is skeptical that the Commission can provide such a reasoned explanation.
As an initial matter, we note that all speech covered by the FCC’s indecency policy is fully protected by the First Amendment.
With that backdrop in mind, we question whether the FCC’s indecency test can survive First Amendment scrutiny. For instance, we are sympathetic to the Networks’ contention that the FCC’s indecency test is undefined, indiscernible, inconsistent, and consequently, unconstitutionally vague. Although the Commission has declared that all variants of “fuck” and “shit” are presumptively indecent and profane, repeated use of those words in “Saving Private Ryan,” for example, was neither indecent nor profane. And while multiple occurrences of expletives in “Saving Private Ryan” was not gratuitous, a single occurrence of “fucking” in the Golden Globe Awards was “shocking and gratuitous.”
We can understand why the Networks argue that FCC’s “patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards” indecency test coupled with its “artistic necessity” exception fails to provide the clarity required by the Constitution, creates an undue chilling effect on free speech, and requires broadcasters to “steer far wider of the unlawful zone.”
The court goes on to discuss the Supreme Court’s strikedown of internet indecency regulation in [Reno v. ACLU][3] and notes that the internet regulations which were struck down used language “substantially similar” to that in the FCC indecency test.
We also note that the FCC’s indecency test raises the separate constitutional question of whether it permits the FCC to sanction speech based on its subjective view of the merit of that speech. It appears that under the FCC’s current indecency regime, any and all uses of an expletive is presumptively indecent and profane with the broadcaster then having to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the Commission, under an unidentified burden of proof, that the expletives were “integral” to the work.
New technology [may make indecency regulations obsolete][4]. The court suggests that such new technology make subject regulations of broadcast speech to review under strict scrutiny.
We would be remiss not to observe that it is increasingly difficult to describe the broadcast media as uniquely pervasive and uniquely accessible to children, and at some point in the future, strict scrutiny may properly apply in the context of regulating broadcast television.
The proliferation of satellite and cable television channels—not to mention internet-based video outlets—has begun to erode the “uniqueness” of broadcast media, while at
the same time, blocking technologies such as the V-chip have empowered viewers to make their own choices about what they do, and do not, want to see on television.
The FCC is free to regulate indecency, but its regulatory powers are bounded by the Constitution. If the Playboy decision is any guide, technological advances may obviate the constitutional legitimacy of the FCC’s robust oversight.
Besides changing the standard for enforcement, the Commission essentially crafted an entirely new definition for “profane” without direction from Congress.
Most dictionaries interpret the term “profane” to denote something that pertains to the irreligious, and since 1927, courts—as well as the FCC itself—have assumed that “profane” in the broadcast context refers to sacrilege, and nothing more.
But the FCC’s definition of “profane” here, would substantially overlap with the statutory term “indecent.” This overlap would be so extensive as to render the statutory term “indecent” superfluous. Because our canons of statutory construction do not permit such an interpretation, see TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 31 (2001), we do not believe the FCC has proffered a reasonable construction of the term “profane.” While we may owe Chevron deference to the FCC’s construction, the FCC must still demonstrate that its construction is reasonable, particularly in light of Congressional intent, the canons of statutory construction, and the historical view of the plain meaning of this term.
While the court is skeptical that broadcast indecency regulation can survive First Amendment scrutiny, it does give the Commission the chance to advance that argument, by ruling on only the administrative law grounds.
As the foregoing indicates, we are doubtful that by merely proffering a reasoned analysis for its new approach to indecency and profanity, the Commission can adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the Networks. Nevertheless, because we can decide this case on this narrow ground, we vacate and remand so that the Commission can set forth that analysis. While we fully expect the Networks to raise the same arguments they have raised to this court if the Commission does nothing more on remand than provide additional explanation for its departure from prior precedent, we can go no further in this opinion.
In dissent, Judge Leval finds that the “the Commission gave a sensible, although not necessarily compelling, reason,” which deserves deference.
[The FCC] made clear acknowledgment that its Golden Globes and Remand Order rulings were not consistent with its prior standard regarding lack of repetition. It announced the adoption of a new standard. And it furnished a reasoned explanation for the change. Although one can reasonably disagree with the Commission’s new position, its explanation – at least with respect to the F-Word – is not irrational, arbitrary, or capricious. The Commission thus satisfied the standards of the Administrative Procedures Act.
The dissent also discusses the various uses of the word “fuck”
The majority notes that the F-Word is often used in everyday conversation without any sexual meaning.… I agree with the majority that the word is often used without a necessary intention on the part of the speaker to refer to sex. A student who gets a disappointing grade on a test, a cook who burns the roast, or a driver who returns to his parked car to find a parking ticket on the windshield, might holler out the F-Word to express anger or disappointment. The word is also sometimes used to express delight, as with Bono’s exhilarated utterance on his receipt of his award. Some use it more as a declaration of uncompromising toughness, or of alignment on the side of vulgarity against prissy manners, without necessarily intending to evoke any sexual meaning. Some use it to intensify whatever it is they may be saying, and some sprinkle the word indiscriminately throughout their conversation with no apparent meaning whatsoever.
In a footnote, the dissent notes that the court is only reviewing cases dealing with use of the word “fuck,” not cases concerning the word “shit.” Were this court testing the Commissions standard for uses of the s-word on television, might the result be different?
“For children, excrement is a main preoccupation of their early years. There is surely no thought that children are harmed by hearing references to excrement.… When the censorship is exercised only to protect polite manners and not by reason of risk of harm, I question whether it can survive scrutiny. Because each instance of censorship at stake in this case involved the F-Word, which in the Commission’s view inherently retains a sexual reference, the question does not arise in this case.”
News and Analysis Links:
David Oxenford, Broadcast Law Blog, [Second Circuit Throws Out FCC Indecency Fines][5]: “While the Court’s decision was based on the FCC’s failure to provide a rational basis for its departure from precedent, the Court also said that it was difficult to imagine how the FCC could constitutionally justify its actions. The Court pointed to the inconsistent decisions of the FCC – fining stations for the use of the “F-word” and the “S-word” in isolated utterances during awards shows, and when used in the context of a program like PBS’ The Blues, but finding that the same words were not actionable when used in Saving Private Ryan or when used by a Survivor contestant interviewed on CBS’ morning show.”
Brooks Boliek, The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. [2nd Cir. Tosses Key FCC Indecency Ruling][6]: “The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Monday tossed out a key FCC ruling that said a slip of the tongue gets broadcasters a fine for indecency, telling the commission that it failed to give a good reason for its decision and couldn’t likely find a good reason if it had to.”
Frank Ahrens, The Washington Post, [Broadcasters Win Appeal Of FCC’s Profanity Ruling][7]: “The ruling is a rebuke to the FCC and a victory for television networks, which in recent years have pushed back against the FCC’s crackdown on indecency. In 2004, the agency reversed years of policy and effectively branded even “fleeting,” or one-time, use of an expletive off-limits on broadcast television and radio, angering Hollywood, which warned of a chilling effect on programming.”
Jim Puzzanghera, The LA Times, [FCC efforts on indecency dealt setback][8]: “In a victory for TV networks but a setback for efforts to shield children from coarse language, a federal court ruled Monday that broadcasters couldn’t be penalized for expletives that were considered impromptu.”
Stephen Labaton, The New York Times, [Court Rebuffs F.C.C. on Fines for Indecency][9]: “If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.”
Advocacy Group Statements:
[Media Access Project][10]: “Score one for the First Amendment. It’s a shame that citizens and broadcasters had to seek protection from the courts, but it is very reassuring to know that one branch of the government can rise above demagogy.”
[Parents Television Counsel][11]: “As we predicted several months ago, a court in New York City has cleared the way for television networks to use the F-word and S-word in front of children at any time of the day. By a mere 2-1 margin, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has, in essence, stolen the airwaves from the public and handed ownership over to the broadcast industry.”
Chairman [Martin][12] and Commissioner [Copps][13] are both disappointed with the court’s decision.
[2]: 438 U.S. 726 [3]: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-511.ZO.html [4]: http://www.iptablog.org/2006/03/28/are_indecency_regulations_obsolete.html [5]: http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/archives/indecency-second-circuit-throws-out-fcc-indecency-fines.html [6]: http://www.hollywoodreporteresq.com/thresq/government/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003593670&imw=Y [7]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/04/AR2007060400875.html?hpid=topnews [8]: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fcc5jun05,0,797754.story?coll=la-tot-business&track=ntothtml [9]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/business/media/05decency.html?ex=1338696000&en=d31a8dc18de0d90a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss [10]: http://www.mediaaccess.org/press/Indecency0604.pdf [11]: http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/release/2007/0604.asp [12]: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-273602A1.pdf [13]: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-273599A1.pdf
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NPR’s Morning Edition had an interesting piece about fair use on the web and the Stanford CIS Fair Use Project. Laura Sydell, NPR: Stanford Center Advocates for Fair Use on Web.
Does Family Guy plagiarize The Simpsons? Is the Family Guy paying homage to older show? Or do the two shows draw from similar comedic scenes and ideas?
Supreme Court Meets YouTube: “In a U.S. Supreme Court first, the justices have joined the Internet age, including digital access to videotaped evidence with an opinion. Scott v. Harris, No. 05-1631 (April 30). The grainy clip (Real Player), which can be reached via a hyperlink on the court’s opinions Web page, shows the view from the dashboard of a police car involved in a high-speed chase in suburban Atlanta. Although the video can’t physically be included in the published opinion, it is referenced in a footnote in which the URL is written out, notes Kathy Arberg, a spokeswoman for the court.”
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TechCrunch reports that MySpace is preventing its users from embedding media hosted on competing services : PhotoBucket Videos Blocked on MySpace: “This is turning into a habit for MySpace, which usually claims bugs, security issues or terms of service violations were the cause of a shut down. In January MySpace mysteriously shut down all Flash widgets on the site for 2.5 hours. An Imeem blockade came next. Vidilife, Stickam and Revver have been permanently banned.”
Also, Wired’s Kevin Paulsen notes: MySpace Sued for Deleting Profile: “A Joplin, Missouri man filed a federal lawsuit last week against MySpace for violating his ‘freedom to use the social networking site in peace.'” The pro se complaint, Mora v. MySpace, is, well, a pro se complaint.
Under the clickwrap terms of service agreement between MySpace and its users, MySpace can summarily delete profiles. Of course, a site owner does face judgment in the court of public opinion for appearing to censor its users for political reasons.
The more interesting qustion is whether MySpace has any obligation to third party beneficiaries (like PhotoBucket, Revver and YouTube) who have no contractual relationship with MySpace?
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BLS represent
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Macworld: Free Battlestar Galactica game hits the Mac:
“Beyond the Red Line rewinds the show’s timeline a little bit, taking players back to Battlestar Galactica’s second season. You arrive on board the Battlestar Pegasus, ready to help defend humanity against the Cylons. Actually, you’ve been given no choice: A civilian refugee, you’ve been press-ganged into service as a pilot, and you take the yokes of a Viper Mk II, Mk VII or Raptor spacecraft as you test your skills against wave after wave of Cylon craft.”
Sounds interesting. But wait, there’s more:
“The game is entirely fan-created — it’s neither made nor endorsed by Universal Studios, NBC nor anyone else officially associated with the hit reimagining of the 1970’s space opera, which has received massive acclaim since its introduction three seasons ago.”
Is Beyond the Red Line infringing on the copyrights or trademarks of NBC Universal?
Does it make a difference that an official BSG game will be released out in the fall by Sierra Online. “We’re huge fans of Battlestar Galactica and are thrilled to have the opportunity to create a game inspired by the TV series,” said Ed Zobrist, president of Sierra Online. “NBC Universal is working closely with us so that players will be able immerse themselves in the Battlestar Galactica universe and re-live their favorite missions from the TV series.”
Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store: “DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song.”
This allows the labels to go above the $0.99 price point, and Apple to give customers a justification to spend more per track– the $1.29 track is simply a better product than the $0.99 track in terms of sound quality and freedom to use.
The next question is: do the other majors sign on?
When does Apple offer the same terms to independents. Many indies would be willing to go DRM-free at $0.99. How price elastic are digital downloads?
Albums will remain at $9.99 with some price flexibility, but will be the premium, 256 kbps, DRM-free versions. It’s a subtle way of adding value to the higher priced album product.
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Major spoilers for the season 3 finale
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Is this the upside to P2P piracy?
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3.14 is notable for multiple reasons
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Viacom filed a copyright infringement suit against YouTube, for direct infringement of the rights to reproduce, publicly perform and display, as well as for vicarious, contributory and inducement copyright infringement. Viacom seeks to enjoin YouTube from distributing copyrighted works as well as to recover moneyary damages.Viacom Int’l, Inc. v. Google, Inc. (complaint)
NY Times: Viacom Sues Google Over YouTube Video Clips: “Viacom, which has feuded publicly with YouTube and its parent Google about the unauthorized posting of its programming online, said it was seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Viacom’s suit is the most aggressive move so far by an old-line media company against the highly popular but legally questionable practice of posting copyrighted media content online.”
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The Sci Fi Network and the producers of Battlestar Galactica are encouraging fan video projects and a certain amount of remixing of the show with the Battlestar Galactica Videomaker Toolkit: “Create your own mock commercials, short scenes or even mini-episodes — funny or dramatic. Choose from more than 30 visual effects, 20-plus audio effects and cuts from the show’s soundtrack, specially selected to help give your videos the Battlestar look and sound. Use them to make your video, add the required promo clip at the end, and send it to us!”
The Wall St. Journal: Music’s New Gatekeeper: “Apple has jettisoned some of the conventions of traditional music retailing — notably, the practice of selling prime promotional spots to recording companies willing to pay for better visibility for their acts. But behind the scenes there’s plenty of horse-trading going on that influences which songs are seen and purchased by iTunes customers.”
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Matt Haughey interviews Mythbuster’s Adam Savage (aka MeFi’s asavage)
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Last week, the Copyright Royalty Board issued its ruling on webacsting royalty rates for those non-interactive webcasters who are subject to the §114 compulsory license. In re: Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings and Ephemeral Recordings, No. 2005-1 CRB DTRA. This ruling will significantly increase the cost of licensing for webcasters.
The parties involved in the rate setting procedure include:
One of the better summaries comes from RAIN: Webcast royalty rate decision announced: “The royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers’ royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues. ”
David Oxenford, Broadcast Law Blog Copyright Royalty Board Releases Decision – Rates are Going Up Significantly: “In a 100 page decision, the Board essentially adopted the royalty rate advanced by SoundExchange (the collective that receives the royalties and distributes the money to copyright holders and performers) in the litigation. It denied all proposals for a percentage of revenue royalty (including a proposal that SoundExchange itself advanced). The Board also rejected any premium for streams received by a wireless service, as SoundExchange had suggested”
David Oxenford, Broadcast Law Blog: More on the Copyright Royalty Board Decision on Internet Radio Music Royalties (another excellent summary of the Royalty Board decisions) and What Next for Internet Radio In Light of the Copyright Royalty Board Decision
Business Week: The Last Days of Internet Radio?: “Here’s what the change will mean for AccuRadio. The station employs six full-time staff members and records about $500,000 in annual sales, mostly from advertising. Of that, Hanson pays record labels about $50,000 in royalty fees. The rule change, which will impose fees retroactively, will jack up royalty fees to more than $600,000 for 2006. Other Webcasters will be in the same boat.”
LA Times: Internet radio stations face fee hike “Broadcast radio stations that also stream their programs online, such as KCRW in Santa Monica, said they might have to scale back on webcasting, and operators of Internet-only radio stations said the new fees would probably force them to go silent.”
If the royalty rates are set so high that webcasters cannot afford to operate and pay artists, the webcast royalty pool may end up smaller than it is currently.
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Complaints about the Super Bowl broadcast
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An employment lawyer calculates the cost of the weekly hijinks at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton
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Intellectual Property Watch: What’s Ahead For IP And The Music Industry – An Interview with Jacqueline Charlesworth, National Music Publishers’ Association. Discusses the Section 115 Reform Act, Compulsory Copyright Royalty rates, ringtones and XM.
Dion Dennis, Fear and Loathing in the Bay State: “So this is what it has come to: Two young artists (their demeanor an echo of 1960s creative expressiveness), paid a pittance to playfully market a surrealist cartoon movie starring several talking base-level consumer commodities, have been labeled semiotic terrorists and criminals by official reality. What does this political panic reflex, played out in the gerontocratic and the politically correct Commonwealth of Massachusetts, tell us?”
Web 2.0, explained in video
The RIAA released a statement in response to Jobs’ open letter, available at Jon Healey’s Bit Player blog at the LA Times: “Apple’s offer to license Fairplay to other technology companies is a welcome breakthrough and would be a real victory for fans, artists and labels. There have been many services seeking a license to the Apple DRM. This would enable the interoperability that we have been urging for a very long time.”
Is this really the best of Jobs’ three scenarios for copyright owners? If Apple did choose to license to third parties, Apple’s proprietary DRM scheme would be the underpinning of the entire digital music industry. And while there would be competitors to the iTunes/iPod hegemony, Apple would be the 500 lb gorilla in the room. Its proprietary format would govern the way that music is used. Perhaps the record labels would prefer to have to deal with using antitrust law to reign in Apple’s dominance in the music distribution ecosystem, but that seems like the labels would be letting too much of that distribution ecosystem get to far out of their control.
It shows how confident Apple is in its product that the company is willing– if not enthusiastic– to prefer open competition to licensing its own proprietary protection scheme.
John Markoff, The New York Times, Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection: “The Universal Music Group, the Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment declined to comment. But several industry executives said they viewed Mr. Jobs’s comments as an effort to deflect blame from Apple and onto the record companies for the incompatibility of various digital music devices and services.”
The Economist: Music wants to be free: “Mr Jobs’s argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right.”
John Gruber, Daring Fireball: Reading Between the Lines of Steve Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Music’: “Interoperability is a good idea. It is simply fair that you should be able to play the music you’ve downloaded and paid for on any brand of music player. “Open up FairPlay” sounds nice, but, as Jobs makes clear, makes little practical sense. If you really want interoperability, then what you want is no DRM, not “open” DRM.”
As Gruber, and others, have noted, there are many copyright owners– independent labels and artists, mainly– who are willing to distribute their recordings in DRM-free formats. In fact, many of these recordings are distributed DRM-free already. Unless the contracts with the Big Four prohibits Apple from distributing any non-protected content from the same store, Apple could distribute independent music without any DRM.
Previously: Apple, DRM and Digital Distribution
Intellectual Property Watch: What’s Ahead For IP And The Music Industry – An Interview with Jacqueline Charlesworth, National Music Publishers’ Association. Discusses the Section 115 Reform Act, Compulsory Copyright Royalty rates, ringtones and XM.
Dion Dennis, Fear and Loathing in the Bay State: “So this is what it has come to: Two young artists (their demeanor an echo of 1960s creative expressiveness), paid a pittance to playfully market a surrealist cartoon movie starring several talking base-level consumer commodities, have been labeled semiotic terrorists and criminals by official reality. What does this political panic reflex, played out in the gerontocratic and the politically correct Commonwealth of Massachusetts, tell us?”
Web 2.0, explained in video
Daniel Terdiman, News.com: ‘Electric Slide’ on slippery DMCA slope: “The inventor of the ‘Electric Slide,’ an iconic dance created in 1976, is fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more importantly, examples of bad dancing.”
I don’t know if this is an example of “bad dancing,” but YouTube user nehiker filmed “Electric Slide on Slide Mountain” in the Catskills:
Ric Silver: The Electric Slide Dance. (Does the use of an animated Spider-man dancer on the web page infringe on Marvel’s copyrights or trademarks, if the use is unlicensed?)
A couple of pieces of additional reading on copyright in choreography:
Julie Van Camp, Copyright of Choreographic Works, 1994-95 Entertainment, Publishing and the Arts Handbook.
Horgan v. Macmillan, Inc., 789 F.2d 157 (2d Cir. 1986) (“Whether still photographs of a ballet can infringe the copyright on the choreography for the ballet.”)
William Patry, The Patry Copyright Blog, Choreography and Alternatives to Copyright Law (Aug. 2005)
And in a tangentially related case, Judge Kaplan in the Southern District decided a case concerning copyright in stage directions (“Blocking and Choreography”), Einhorn v. Mergatroyd Productions, 426 F.Supp.2d 189 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 2006).
The New York Times: Viacom Tells YouTube: Hands Off: “In a sign of the growing tension between old-line media and the new Internet behemoths, Viacom, the parent company of MTV and Comedy Central, demanded yesterday that YouTube, the video-sharing Web site owned by Google, remove more than 100,000 clips of its programming”
While there are certainly many infringing clips on the site, some fraction of the takedown notices sent to Google claim infringement in non-infringing content– such as a home video (filmed at Redbones in lovely Davis Square.) John Palfrey asks, How Many Jim Moores Are Out There? Viacom’s Cease and Desist Letters … for Home Videos? “Stipulate that Jim Moore holds all rights in his video, and Viacom none. And stipulate further that Jim Moore is far from alone. One presumes that Viacom’s argument is that they did not issue these misrepresentative notices ‘knowingly.’ I wonder how many home videos have to have been caught up — and taken down — in this sweep before one could say that it was “knowing” on the part of Viacom?”
Previously: Copyright Fraud and Misuse, A series of tubes: the song: the story
Also, Reel Pop: A Brief Guide to Online Video Lawsuits: “Following the recent news that Fox subpoenaed YouTube to identify a user uploading copyrighted content, I thought it’d be useful to collate info about litigation against the major video-sharing sites. Below, details on lawsuits and subpoenas against Veoh, Bolt, Grouper, YouTube, Google Video and MySpace.”
A few European countries, including Norway, Germany, and France, are considering requiring Apple, Inc. to make the songs sold on the iTunes store playable on music players from other manufacturers. ARS Technica reports: iTunes DRM called out by France and Germany: “Apple is being challenged once again to open up its DRM by consumer groups in Europe. This time, Germany and France have joined the slowly-growing number of countries who are asking Apple to allow the protected songs purchased from the iTunes Store to be played on other music players besides the iPod. Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon told the Associated Press that France’s consumer lobby group, UFC-Que Choisir, and Germany’s Verbraucherzentrale are now part of the European effort to push Apple into an open DRM system, with more countries considering joining the group”
Steve Jobs responds in an essay on Apple’s web site, noting that use of DRM is at the requirement of the copyright owners who license music to the iTunes store. Apple would be happy to sell unprotected songs: Thoughts on Music:
To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in ‘open’ licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats.
The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the ‘big four’ music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.
Jobs goes on to explain that Apple has refused to license its Fairplay DRM system because doing so would make the scheme less secure. Because licensees would need to know how to decrypt the protected files, allowing third-parties access to the Fairplay code would make the scheme much more likely to be cracked. Apple would be happy to sell music without DRM, if only the Big Four would be willing to let Apple sell unprotected files.
The major labels seem to be getting closer to attempting large scale use of digital distribution without DRM. From MIDEM, Victoria Shannon reports in The NY Times: Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music: “As even digital music revenue growth falters because of rampant file-sharing by consumers, the major record labels are moving closer to releasing music on the Internet with no copying restrictions — a step they once vowed never to take.”
Independent labels are already selling unprotected MP3 files through eMusic. Other Music, here in New York City, is set to launch a digital download store selling indie music in high-bitrate, unprotected MP3 format. Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired News interviews: A Real Music Store Sprouts Online: “Other Music [will take] its handpicked approach to music sales online with the launch of its own digital music store. Located at digital.othermusic.com, the site will stock high-quality MP3s from Pitchfork-friendly bands, without using digital rights management of any kind.”
Yesterday, Apple, Inc. and Apple Corp. entered into a new agreement concerning the Apple trademark. In this new Agreement, the Jobs-helmed Apple, Inc. will own the Apple mark and license it to the Beatles’ Apple Corp. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Reconsidering Star Wars in the light of the prequels
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“Part-time judges give us part-time justice.”
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Inside Higher Ed: A Stand Against Wikipedia: “While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work. All faculty members will be telling students about the policy and explaining why material on Wikipedia — while convenient — may not be trustworthy.”
The New York Times: Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively: “A simple search of published court decisions shows that Wikipedia is frequently cited by judges around the country, involving serious issues and the bizarre — such as a 2005 tax case before the Tennessee Court of Appeals concerning the definition of ‘beverage’ that involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, just this week, a case in Federal District Court in Florida that involved the term ‘booty music’ as played during a wet T-shirt contest.”
While universities are discouraging undergraduates from citing to Wikipedia, courts are more frequently relying on the site. Undergrad students are expected to be researching from primary sources, not from encyclopedias. So, just like the Encyclopedia Britannica should not be cited in a university level term paper, neither should Wikipedia. But in court? Wikipedia should be considered a valid citation for those facts that are considered to be common knowledge, obvious, or where no better citation can be found, such as for booty music.
Inside Higher Ed: A Stand Against Wikipedia: “While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work. All faculty members will be telling students about the policy and explaining why material on Wikipedia — while convenient — may not be trustworthy.”
The New York Times: Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively: “A simple search of published court decisions shows that Wikipedia is frequently cited by judges around the country, involving serious issues and the bizarre — such as a 2005 tax case before the Tennessee Court of Appeals concerning the definition of ‘beverage’ that involved hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, just this week, a case in Federal District Court in Florida that involved the term ‘booty music’ as played during a wet T-shirt contest.”
While universities are discouraging undergraduates from citing to Wikipedia, courts are more frequently relying on the site. Undergrad students are expected to be researching from primary sources, not from encyclopedias. So, just like the Encyclopedia Britannica should not be cited in a university level term paper, neither should Wikipedia. But in court? Wikipedia should be considered a valid citation for those facts that are considered to be common knowledge, obvious, or where no better citation can be found, such as for booty music.
Here are a number of interesting links I came across in the last month, presented without comment:
Eric Goldman and John Ottaviani: Top Cyberlaw Developments of 2006
Eriq Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter, Esq: High-Tech, High Anxiety: Innovations Likely to Rattle Nerves: “Keep an eye out for these seven emerging technologies, all threatening to attract the ire of content owners in the new year.”
Google AdWords Trademark Policy
NY Times: Music of the Hemispheres: “You hear only one note, and you already know who it is… How we do this? Why are we so good at recognizing music?”
Ask.MeFi: For which products or services is it worth it to buy name brand instead of generic brand?
A dozen years ago on the internet: The Best and Worst of 1994 and Predictions for ’95
William Patry’s <a href=http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2007/01/my-treatise-is-now-available.html">Copyright treatise has been released along with The Patry Treatise Blog. See also Ann Bartow, The Hegemony of the Copyright Treatise. University of Cincinnati Law Review, Vol. 73, pp. 1-64, Fall 2004.
Thomas Field, IP Frontline: Lawyers Should Be Cautious When Copying Other Lawyers’ Work
Get a First Life
Ninth Circuit Opinions— an automatically generated feed for opinions from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. How about for the Second Circuit?
James Grimmelmann: The Structure of Search Engine Law
The TTABlog: Google Sues Leo Stoller’s Companies for RICO violations: “The 25-page Complaint, accompanied by nearly 200 pages of exhibits, charges the Defendants with violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S. C. Sec. 1961 et. seq., of Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, and of the law of unfair competition.” Complaint.
BBC News: Ninja kitten band win Coke battle: “The band, 7 Seconds of Love, argued that Coke used their song Ninja and its distinctive kitten-filled video without permission in a South American advert.”
New York Times: Levi’s Turns to Suing Its Rivals: “United States Patent and Trademark No. 1,139,254 is not much to look at: a pentagon surrounding a childlike drawing of a seagull in flight. But the design for a Levi’s pocket, first used 133 years ago, has become the biggest legal battleground in American fashion.”
Hollywood Reporter, Esq: File-Sharing Judge Questions ‘Making Available’ Standard: “On the meaning of “distribution,” Karas seemed to question whether “making available” is the same as “distribution,” saying the former was a “more passive concept.” Since U.S. copyright law does not recognize “making available” as actionable in itself, Karas asked Gabriel how he could use Barker’s list of available songs on the Kazaa service as proof of an infringing distribution activity.”
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Calvin Trillan test drives Lexus’s self-parking car
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/parking">parking</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/nyc">nyc</a>)
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/apple">apple</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/osx">osx</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/quicktime">quicktime</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/video">video</a>)
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/searchengine">searchengine</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/law">law</a>)
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/saxophone">saxophone</a>)
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For years, the rumor mill has expected Apple to release a mobile phone, with the name assumed to be “iPhone,” to be consistent with the iMac and iPod.
Cisco owns a federally registered trademark for iPhone and introduced new VoIP phones in the iPhone brand at the end of last year: Cisco — not apple — announces iPhone branded VoIP phones.
Today, Apple introduced its iPhone device, which is a mobile communicator and media player that also happens to run a version of OS X.
I’m ready to line up to buy one.
Not surprisingly, Reuters reports that Apple and Cisco are preparing to enter a licensing agreement over the mark: Cisco expects Apple agreement on iPhone trademark: “Cisco spokeswoman Penny Bruce said the two companies had been in discussions, and it believed that Apple intends to agree to a final document and public statement concerning the trademark.”
In addition, the company is now known as Apple, Inc and no longer as Apple Computer, Inc., reflecting the move beyond the computer into consumer electronics.
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/healthinsurance">healthinsurance</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/funny">funny</a>)
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The curmudgeons at the Economist like vinyl
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/music">music</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/vinyl">vinyl</a>)
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Idolator does a take on Pazz & Jop
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/music">music</a>)
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Nerd fight!
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/nerdfight">nerdfight</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/blogging">blogging</a>)
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/law">law</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/wired">wired</a>)
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The new tube frontier
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(tags: <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/internet">internet</a> <a href="http://del.icio.us/andrewraff/video">video</a>)
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