Introduction to Aaron Wolf and Snowdift.coop

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329.

Expected Audience: Those interested in financially supporting free culture and having their free culture works financially supported.


mp3 audio | ogg audio | torrent (CC BY)

Ever since Nick and I decided to start what would become Netizen Empowerment Federation in January 2012, I have been thinking a lot about financial sustainability. It's the main reason I decided to broaden the scope of the Lawcast.

I think snowdrift.coop has a lot of promise for financial sustainability, but it isn't ready yet. I've spent some time today preparing to get people together to discuss what can be done now - or if waiting really is the best option. I decided that having a discussion where the focus was "get us from now to snowdrift.coop" did not make a lot of sense if people weren't familiar with snowdrift.coop.

Snowdrift.coop has an overwhelming amount of documentation and even if it was a little less overwhelming, some people wouldn't read it. That's why I have decided to provide subscribers with the audio to this interview.

Unfortunately, the audio is still a bit overwhelming at over two hours. Perhaps Aaron has the time to make it to our panel. Perhaps Aaron and I can do a shorter interview. I'll see what I can do.

For now, as said by Aaron:
"The show is a bit over two hours long and covers topics including: copyright, music business, economics, participatory vs performance-based music, philosophy of art, barbershop harmony, software freedom, and more. Overall, it's a good casual summary of my whole personal story of my life and career and how I came to my current understanding and feelings on these topics."



Here are the links (with just a bit of commentary) from the original post.

• wolftune.com
• snowdrift.coop
• http://blog.ninapaley.com/2013/12/07/make-art-not-law-2/
• http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net/
• http://taskcoach.org/
• http://blog.wolftune.com/2012/08/copyingisfun1.html
• http://blog.wolftune.com/2012/08/copyingisfun2.html
• https://archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheftForBarbershopQuartet
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/inaugural-stupid-patent-month
• http://sitasingstheblues.com/
• http://rynothebearded.com/2013/06/the-jazzcast-after-party/
• http://spencermichaud.bandcamp.com/
• http://www.spencermichaud.com/
• http://blog.ninapaley.com/2009/12/28/the-cult-of-originality/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiP!:_A_Remix_Manifesto
• http://vimeo.com/8040182
• https://torrentfreak.com/lawrence-lessig-wins-damages-for-bogus-youtube-takedown-140228/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYwOtTMUz0c
• Aaron’s summary of the whole copyright thing, with the library emphasis (with tons of links, and updated continually since the original 2008 posting): http://blog.wolftune.com/2008/06/rational-view-of-copyright.html

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9. Monkey Art and Copyright: Intellectual Property Rights in Works by Nonhuman Creators

Koko: A Talking Gorilla

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329. This show was recorded and edited using GNU/Linux.

Expected Audience: anyone curious about animals, AI, extraterrestrials and copyright

This week, Doug speaks to Neal Smith, author of "Monkey Art and Copyright: Intellectual Property Rights in Works by Nonhuman Creators."















mp3 audio | ogg audio | torrent | video


Per usual, the sparse show notes are after the break.

7. NEF Board Member Josiah Barbour

Listen and find out how Tottenham fits in to Music Manumit

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329. This show was recorded and edited using GNU/Linux.

Expected Audience: 
people interested in patent policy and those interest in the Netizen Empowerment Federation

Welcome back to the Music Manumit Lawcast! It's been a while since we've put out a podcast. We should be putting out one a week this summer. They'll be shorter than last summer, and it'll just be Doug and a guest. Also, Brian should be coming out with some shows on trademark law.




mp3 audio | ogg audio | torrent | unedited video


Josh and Doug cover a lot of ground. Expect a more focused show next time, when Doug speaks with Alex Owczarczak.

Show notes after the break

Current Issues: Week 2 - Access to Knowledge

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329.

Luckily, this week our materials are publicly accessible via Public Interest Intellectual Property Advisors (PIIPA).  Specifically, we read Chapter 6: Copyright and capability for education: An approach ‘from below’ by Margaret Chon.

Many of these topics are ones we'll address later in the semester, in class, if not on the blog, so I give you the chapter list so you can let me know if I should target any of the topics for an article:

1. Intellectual property through the lens of human development, by Tzen Wong (doc) (pdf)
2. Intellectual property and medicine: Towards global health equity, by Claudia Chamas, Ben Prickril and Joshua D. Sarnoff (doc) (pdf)
3. Food security and intellectual property rights: Finding the linkages, by Hans Morten Haugen, Manuel Ruiz Muller and Savita Mullapudi Narasimhan (doc) (pdf)
4. Trends and scenarios in the legal protection of traditional knowledge, by Charles McManis and Yolanda Terán (doc) (pdf)
5. Traditional cultural expressions: Preservation and innovation, by Tzen Wong and Claudia Fernandini (doc) (pdf)
6. Copyright and capability for education: An approach ‘from below’, by Margaret Chon (doc) (pdf)
7. Knowledge and education: Pro-access implications of new technologies, by Dalindyebo Shabalala (doc) (pdf)
8. Cultural diversity and the arts: Contemporary challenges for copyright law, by Tzen Wong, Molly Torsen and Claudia Fernandini (doc) (pdf)
9. Scenario planning on the future of intellectual property: Literature review and implications for human development, by Michael A. Gollin, Gwen Hinzeand Tzen Wong (doc) (pdf)

Long-time readers will immediately see a connection between what they are doing at PIIPA and Music Manumit. However, I remain skeptical of IP law changes changing things for rural locations. I'm not opposed to liberalization of the laws, but I am skeptical as to how much it will matter.


For example, Laos will become a member of the WTO on February 2nd. Laos acceded to the Berne Convention on March 14, 2012. In theory then, before IP started encroaching on the Lao people, education should have been fantastic. However, according to 2007 data, Laos ranked 139 in education. 

I don't purport to be a Laotian scholar and maybe this is a global anomaly, but education in the US, with a uniform copyright law (if not contract law), is vastly different from state to state. There are a million different ways to measure education, and I don't want to get into the details here. I just want to point out that different situations probably call for different solutions. Perhaps copyright reform is part of a solution everywhere, but pinning our hope on copyright reform, when people don't have access to the Internet, seems flawed. Let's get them access to all of the information on the web. Then we can worry about things like whether Google Translate is a copyright violation.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that maybe the rankings are skewed toward Western ideals. Looking at the 2011 HDI report, which has replaced the Education Index, Japan, if you can call them non-Western, is the first non-Western country on the list at #12. The first more truly non-Western country is U.A.E. at 30, but having been to U.A.E., I can say it doesn't seem like the type of anti-woman place that is the general depiction of the Middle East (this statement of course implies the West is not anti-women, which is an arguable point - perhaps a matter of degree, not kind).

The point here is not to single out methodological problems with the UN's studies. There's already plenty of criticism out there. My point is simply to take the education rankings and the HDI rankings with a grain of salt when thinking about how to improve education. 

Questions

As I mentioned last week, we get an opportunity to ask the speakers questions and I asked Professor Chon about the rural/urban divide. She essentially agreed with me. She went on to say, and I'm paraphrasing, "Rural individuals in the US might have more in common with rural individuals in other countries than the urban people of the US." (Actually, I don't remember if she said "might", but I'll hedge on her behalf.)

How we get people in urban areas to care about those in rural areas is a project beyond my pay grade, which, incidentally, is zero. (you can help fix this by the links on the botton of the post!) In fact, that's an issue beyond IP law and an issue with which much of the class was deeply troubled. I think partially we in the class are troubled by our ignorance. Literally no one in the class has a background in international law.

Some of the other questions were as follows:
How do you advocate for an increased focus on IP in Human Development OVER other needs?
Who pays for it all?
What incentives can copyright law provide for broader access to educational materials?
Is there a One-size-fits all solution to International IP?

Higher Education

Now, I do find the proposal as applied to higher education to be intriguing. Those in higher education are by definition the elite at some level. About 30% of USicans have a associates degree or higher. We could probe the numbers a bit more, but for our purposes here, we can think of the educated as the elite at some level. Certainly one assumes that in 2013 those in higher education are going to have access to the Internet. What an Internet without copyright restrictions could mean to those in cities is near-on limitless. Individuals would still need to worry about patent and trademark protections, but access to the libraries of Harvard, NYU, Oxford, etc. is certain to help those in Johannesburg think of solutions to solve their countries' problems. Access to information about building efficient water distribution, efficient network infrastructure and efficient transportation. There has to still be the political will to impliment the infrastructure, but at least then academics and activists will be armed with the data needed to convince the law makers. People in the poor countries sides are worried about surviving, not lobbying. I'm all for the poor banding together and using their numbers as power, but it's just not the political reality in most of the world.

Music Education

Let's step back for just a second. You might be thinking, "Why are we talking about education and education levels on a music law policy blog?" To a certain extent, that's the same question the students in class are asking. We are not educators (though I did write my master's thesis on higher education). Most of the people in the class are future patent attorneys (either agents or litigators).

But, what does this mean for music education? We're going to come back to music education again in Week 5 (assuming they don't change the schedule on us again), but aside from happiness, I'm not sure what music really gives people as far as a tool. However, there are a lot of unhappy people in the world, and many of those people are in Africa. This is true on a number of studies. So, I say, have at it. And, if you're an artist and want to make the world a happier place, consider releasing your work under a Creative Commons license. Not only will it make me happy, it will allow those in Africa and other poor countries to enjoy your music free from the most stringent copyright restrictions.

Further Research

Professor Chon primarily focuses on copyright for textbooks, but for those interested in education, it might be worth thinking about how trademarks and patents might interfere with education. Unfortunately, at the moment I don't have time to research these topics. However, as always, if this is a topic that interests you, please let me know and I can do further research.

More Information

If you want to learn more about music education, check out the interview Tom and I did with my father.  If you want to know more about online music education, check out the interview Tom and I did with a music theory teacher at P2PU.org.

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Current Issues: Week 1 - Introduction to International IP

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329.

Welcome to Doug's section of the Spring 2013 Lawcast! Today I want to give you some perspective on how the semester will go and very briefly discuss what we covered last week in class.

Some of the class topics I've decided for the time-being are probably not topics best suited for this blog. If people want particular topics, please let me know and I'll make sure and include them.

In-class topics for the rest of the semester include:
Week 2: Copyright: Access to Knowledge
Week 3: Patent: Access to Marine Energy Resources
Week 4: ICANN
Week 5: Product Development PPPs
Week 6: Foreign Rights Holders
Week 7: Trademark: Access to Grey Market Goods
Week 8: Traditional Knowledge
Week 9: Agricultural, Biotech and Genetic Resources
Week 10: ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, TPP
Week 11: Trademark: GIs and Development
Week 12: Patent: Access to Medicines
Week 13: Review and finish up papers

It seems we'll always get a chance to ask the speakers a question, so if any topics interest you, make sure you tell me what questions you'd like me to ask. Again, the patent stuff I am not going to write about here and probably not at Open Source Playground either because it's not going to be software related.

This week met with Professor Daniel Gervais of Vanderbilt University to discuss an introduction to international IP. International law is a weird beast. We generally think of governments imposing laws on its citizenry (or someone that is less jaded might think citizens voice their social norms through laws in a less). If you murder someone, the case in the US will be named State vs. Individual, The People vs. Individual or something of that nature. However, in the international context only states are involved. The US can bring an action against China (or visa versa), but an individual has no recourse to the WTO or WIPO. (There are other international organizations, such as the WHO, but WTO and WIPO are the two big ones in IP.)

This is not to say that cross-border litigation does not occur. It certainly does. However, aside from the broadest norms of allowing foreign nationals to bring suit, the suits are going to be apply local or national law. This is a simplistic view of things, particularly when it comes to things such as maritime law or the CISG, but for present purposes it will probably serve us well-enough. Unfortunately, without getting into the gory details, I think that is about as far as we can go. I think this framework will serve us well going through the rest of the semester.

Lastly, I wanted to give everyone a heads up that Brian has told me that he has been working on finishing up the posts from last semester and that he'll be bringing you articles about copyright and trademark registration this semester. Now that the Colts are out of the playoffs, he'll have a lot more free time! As a Baltimorian, I am supposed to hate the Colts, but mostly I hate the NFL! :)



Here are a few ways to get in touch:
Music Manumit Last.fm group
My Last.fm username: DouglasAWh.
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280.status.net: douglasawh
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Copyright: Week 9 - Infringement

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329

Expected Audience: Law Geeks. More so than a lot of weeks, the infringement discussion requires some knowledge of the framework of the US justice (I use that term loosely) system. If you are curious about infringement and you think the discussion is too high-level, please let us know. Between this week, next week and the week on contributory/vicarious liability, we should have six posts on the subject between Brian and me, so we have plenty of time to bring it down a level.

Reading:  

October 11 – Copyright Infringement I: the Reproduction Right & the Substantially Similar Copy (Casebook pp. 289-309)

October 23 – Copyright Infringement II: Contemporary Cases on Copying (Casebook pp. 309-314; 317-323; 334-337)

## October 25 – Copyright Infringement III: the Reproduction Right & the Distribution Right (Casebook pp. 337-354; 358-362)

You can only infringe rights. There are five (or six, depending on how you count) rights, which are:

1. reproduction
2. distribution
3. public display
4. public performance
5. creation of derivative works
6. "in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission" 17 U.S.C. §106.

You can learn more about these rights in The Five Exclusive Rights and Moral Rights on Life of a Law Student.

Before I move forward in the discussion, since I know we have readers from all over, I wanted to mention where a few places are located as far as circuits are concerned (these are by no means exhaustive!).

Maryland/North Carolina are in the 4th Circuit.
Michigan/Kentucky are in the 6th Circuit.
Chicago/Wisconsin are in the 7th Circuit.
While the 7th Circuit has some important judges in Posner and Easterbrook, most of the important copyright cases come out of the 2nd Circuit (NYC) and 9th Circuit (CA). Unfortunately neither the table of contents nor the table of cases in our book lists the court for the cases, but I did randomly come across Bridgeport Music from the 6th Circuit in preparing for this post. This also got me thinking about the relative position of the circuits as far as population.

According to Wikipedia, the 9th Circuit covers almost 20% of the nation's population. If the circuits were of roughly equal size, we'd have 5 or 6 circuits, instead of 11. The 9th Circuit is also by far the largest in terms of land mass, serving California and Alaska (among other large western states). Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't offer

I have to say that this week I have really struggled to come up with a reasonably novel or controversial idea for Brian to rebut/critque, or at least one that I actually believe or feel competent enough to discuss. There is no doubt that circuit splits are irritating, but this is not something particular to infringement or even Copyright. Nonetheless...

THESIS FOR CRITIQUE/REBUTTAL: 
Copyright needs a specialized tribunal like the Federal Circuit for patents.

Not to completely geek out on you, but in order to understand how this might work, you have to have *some* understanding of Article III of the US Constitution. I trust Brian can imagine how such a system will work, so I'll refrain from going into gory detail. If anybody wants the gory detail, next week is another infringement week, so maybe I can readdress the issue.

The obvious immediate rebuttal for my proposal is, "Where do you stop?" Certainly one might think specialized drug courts or specialized environment courts might make sense. The reason that I think drug courts and environmental courts are different is because those areas do not have full federal preemption. As has been discussed previously on Music Manumit and the Lawcast, Copyright preemption is not 100%, but it's pretty close.

Another major rebuttal to a special copyright court based on the Federal Circuit is that there is a sense that the Federal Circuit gets wrapped up in patents and forgets they have a duty to the public and not just the patent bar. Occasionally, SCOTUS must step in to smack them down. I don't accuse any judges at the Federal Circuit of intentionally skirting their duty to the public, but we probably are all a little guilty of tunnel vision when we get wrapped up in our work. Certainly a specialized Copyright Court could lose sight of the interplay between copyright law and any number of subjects which border it including telecommunications, trademarks, contracts, criminal law, etc. I bring up this additional rebuttal not because I want to squeeze Brian out of his rebuttal, but since he is not in Patent Law this semester the actions of the Federal Circuit will likely not be fresh on his mind.

Those are the two main reasons why I'm not necessarily convinced by my own proposal, but it provides us with a framework for discussion of circuit splits that goes a little beyond the "circuit splits are bad" thesis, which aside from the argument that it helps employ lawyers and (more importantly) provides SCOTUS with a variety of viewpoints, I don't think there's a lot to disagree with. I don't know, maybe Brian will surprise me.

An interesting thing that was brought up in class is that many people don't see the different tests in the 2nd and 9th circuits as being the type of split for SCOTUS to address. In theory the 2nd and 9th circuits are using different tests to get to the same conclusions. It would only be if the conclusions were different that SCOTUS would need to get involved. Of course, this does little to help individuals that don't follow the courts (i.e., non-lawyers) know when they are infringing and when they are not. A unified copyright court would help solve that problem.

Copyright: Day 3 - Copyright Research

This is not legal advice.

I don't think I have much to say about today's class. Professor Cavicchi filled in for Professor Wong. He is the IP Librarian for UNH Law and spoke to us about researching copyright issues. His slides are publicly available and I've embedded them below. Enjoy! See you next Tuesday with more substantive copyright discussion!

Copyright Research : Tools & Strategies from Franklin Pierce IP Center at UNH School of Law

Copyright: Day 2 - Graffiti as Fair Use?

Today was the second day of my copyright course at UNH Law. Again, Susan Richey was filling in for Mary Wong.

The readings for the day were pages 3-11; 15-18; 21-31 and 33-39 Copyright in a Global Information Economy: Third Edition by Cohen, Loren, Okediji and O'Rourke. In case anyone wants to follow along, the ISDN is 978-0-7355-9196-7. The same as last time.

Like the first day, I didn't learn much, because the course is for people that don't necessarily have the copyright background I have. I did learn one incredible thing though. I got out copyright-hippied by a professor.

Professor Richey thinks there should be a "fair use" argument for mural artists painting murals on the side of other people's buildings.

Now, maybe she doesn't actually think this. Maybe she was just trying to provoke conversation, but she seemed pretty adamant about it to me. While generally I think private property should submit to the public good I don't place smog regulations in the same category as murals. I realize that mural art is different than posting art to Flickr, but from a First Amendment point of view, it seems to me like there is ample opportunity to speak. The private property chilling affect seems pretty limited.

It sounded like Professor Richey was ready to give the fair use exception only to artists and not to advertisements, but as far as I'm concerned, a good advertisement is art.

Now, let me also be clear that people that think graffiti cannot be art are simply wrong. I also think cities should have public places for such art. However, if architecture is art, who is to say that the graffiti isn't, well, vandalism. There is a big difference in Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q. and someone actually "vandalizing" the Mona Lisa. Thanks to restoration guru Henry Hebert for point out this "innocent vandalism".

Let me also be clear that there are other legal issues in Professor Richey's comment such as federalism and government "takings" which I don't feel the need to discuss here. If people want to discuss those in the comments, have at it.

Aside from that, below are some odds and ends from today's class.

We discussed briefly how you can waive moral rights, but you can't transfer them. We also briefly discussed "neighboring rights" of copyright, which in the US are for musical performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasters. We also briefly discussed the definition of a joint work. The Nat King Cole/Natalie Cole duet is *not* a joint work, because Nat King didn't intend it to be a joint work (Nat King was dead at the time of the editing to make the track a duet).

Interestingly, it was mentioned that work-for-hire is one of the most misunderstood copyright doctrines. I'll be sure to write more about this issue in depth when we get past this survey portion of the course.

It was also mentioned that moral rights expire upon death. While this may be true of VARA rights, this is not true in all states regarding things such as the right of publicity. Also, I do not believe this is true in all European nations, though it's possible I'm wrong about that.

We also briefly discussed copyright registration, contributory liability, vicarious liability, the first sale doctrine, fair use, and the DMCA. Actually, our discussion of fair use was a little longer than brief, but we just spoke with CC Canada about the differences in the US fair use and the Canadian fair dealing and I don't think our discussion today in class warrants a lot of discussion here. There's already plenty written on Wikipedia about fair use for those that want something before we get to the more substantive parts of the doctrine later in the semester.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that after copyright class Professor Greg Vetter of the University of Houston gave a guest lecture today. My understanding is the video will be post on the UNH YouTube page. Currently the video is not up. I don't think the talk warrants a separate write-up from me. It was *very* basic. I highly doubt anyone reading this entry would find it worth an hour of their time, unless someone is just curious about legal education. If that's really all you want though, let me suggest Professor Goldman's talk on SOPA/PIPA or Judge Gajarsa's talk on the America Invents Act. However, because I am so ridiculously awesome, if someone wants me to do a write-up, I will. Also, I want to publicly thank Professor Vetter for coming to the school to give a talk. While I didn't personally gain anything from the talk, not everyone in the room wrote their master's thesis on free/libre and open source software. It's very clear I wasn't the target audience and I don't begrudge Professor Vetter for that.

That's all for now, tomorrow there should be a patent entry up over at opensourceplayground.org! Also, we don't have class next Tuesday, so no post from me. Professor Wong is still in Asia.

Copyright: Day 1

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329.

On Monday, I started my second year of law school. For those interested, my courses are Professional Responsibility, Evidence, Criminal Procedure, Patent Law and Copyright Law. Yesterday , I started my copyright and patent courses. For those interested, I will be posting patent stuff over at opensourceplayground.org. Specifically, my first post is up.

Yesterday was a bit different than my copyright class will normally be because my professor, Professor Wong, is in Asia with the Dean. Susan Richey was filling in for Professor Wong. Even though I had not given any thought to the fact that a write-up of class could be a derivative work, Professor Richey gave express permission for us to post notes. Of course, these twice-weekly write-ups won't just be my "notes" by my independent thoughts on the readings and lecture.

The readings for the day were pages 3-11; 15-18; 21-31 and 33-39 Copyright in a Global Information Economy: Third Edition by Cohen, Loren, Okediji and O'Rourke. In case anyone wants to follow along, the ISDN is 978-0-7355-9196-7. Luckily for me, the readings are the same for next class. Also, "Understanding Copyright Law" from LexisNexis is a "recommended" book for the course.

The readings included a snippet from John Locke's Two Treatises on Government, which interestingly I recently gave up on having the time to listen to the audio book. Also, interestingly, there were no cases in the reading. There was just reading from the book authors and select law review articles. If people want citations to law review articles in the future, I can list those in the future. I assume many of the readers won't have access to the law review articles (or the book for that matter, but duplicating things people won't have seems silly).

Of course, being the first day of class, we started by answering the question "What is a copyright?" Well, the easy answer is that it is an "intangeble property" as opposed (obviously) to tangible property right. In the US copyright is based on economic/utilitarian theory, rather than moral/natural rights. While this is not something we really talked about in class, it is worth mentioning that many of the moral rights Europeans enjoy through copyright, USicans get through common law rights, such as the "right of publicity". This is, at least, one way how the US believes it fulfills its Berne Convention obligations. I'm sure we'll come back to this later in the semester, but since I know we have European readers, I wanted to go ahead and mention it here. I've already written about VARA, which is another way US artists can receive moral rights.

While we (fittingly) really didn't talk much about trademarks and patents, we did briefly discuss how copyright fits into the intellectual property scheme.

1. Patent is strongest, but shortest right.
2. Copyright is next strongest right, but still limited in time (though long).
3. Trademark is weakest, but potentially perpetual.

It is worth noting here too that in some other countries trademark protection is stronger. Some countries ban comparative advertising, for example. Comparative advertising is essentially a First Amendment right. Again, this is not something we discussed in class, but I think it worth mentioning.

I can really only say that I learned one thing from the first class, which says less about Professor Richey and more about the knowledge I had coming into the class. That one thing is that apparently the first copyright existed in Ireland in 550...almost 1000 years before the invention of the printing press. The line from King Diarmiud is "to every cow her calf" though obviously he didn't speak modern English. I don't think this historical fact has a ton of bearing on our modern system, so I'm not going to explain the metaphor, but I did find it interesting.

After 550, some important dates are:

1476 -- William Caxton invented the printing Press

1556 -- Charter of the Stationer's Company, copyright used as a tool of censorship

1710 -- Statute of Anne, first recognition of the rights of authors in English law and first recognition of public domain

Professor Richey used a line which I thought was interesting given the modern context - "when there is new technology, copyright law goes berserk." She didn't really seem to put a moral stamp on that statement. If I were to say something like that, I would certainly mean that we as a society had not learned from the past. She seemed to say it in a descriptive manner. It makes me think maybe we as a community should spend less time complaining about player pianos and more time just fixing things. While a day later I hesitate to call it an epiphany, I think it's similar to what I discovered in Constitutional Law last semester. The framer's designed the Constitution for gridlock. Political douche-baggery is not a bug, it is a feature. Now, the context might be different with broadcast television and the Internet, but still, it was something I came away with. Anyway, we'll see if that statement holds sway with me at the end of the semester.

We briefly discussed compilations vs. databases, some history of the copyright act in the US and derivative works, but those are all topics we'll discuss in greater detail at a later date. In fact, as I already mentioned, the readings for tomorrow as the same as the ones for yesterday, so I may bring you more information on those tomorrow or Friday. I do want to mention one other broad thing before I call it quits for the day. Remember, copyright does not protect abstract ideas, facts or scientific principles.

Lastly, we also went over a list of questions about whether things were copyrightable. Here are a select few. Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

• movie based on the novel
• a tourist's instant photograph of a scenic view
• a professional photograph of the same view
• an artist's copy of the tourist's photograph 

What legal issues do you spot?

This is not legal advice. Leave audio feedback at (512) 686-6329.

This is going to be an odd post...even by our standards. :) I am both announcing a project called "Sounds of the World Cup" and asking for people's opinions on the project. The project is to be a joint effort between Sportazine.com and Music Manumit. The project will be released under CC BY-SA. It is set to be a documentary primarily about fan culture through music.

Let me be clear that is not a fully baked idea, but I have been to the World Cup before, so I do know a little bit about what to expect. On the other hand, I have never been to Brazil, so that will require some additional research. Let's make up a random number...it's 75% percent baked.

The idea is to record game sound and music from each of the 32 represented countries at the 2014 World Cup, as well as festivities in the host cities. We won't know who all of those countries are until October of 2013 and we won't know which cities they will be in until December 2013. Thus, it will be hard to do a budget before then, but if we just assume the worst financially, then I think we will be fine.

The obvious first legal question is licensing of the music and game footage. As you'll see below, language barrier is a concern, but I hope to explain to artists and performers in Brazil of the educational documentary we are trying to make and hope that we get enough live recording to make the video. Otherwise, we can use Jamendo, Free Music Archive and other sources to find music from the 32 nations. Jamendo already has a nice search-by-country feature.

Now, licensing game footage could be harder. I've taken pictures of games in the past, and there has never been a legal issue, but some of the IP-related issues about sponsors in the London Olympics have made a least three people jumpy about this. I'm not particularly jumpy, but we've got some due-diligence to do before we actually file with Kickstarter. As I said on identi.ca already (link below at the end), this isn't planning on being an expose, so I doubt it will irritate anyone at FIFA. After all, we are planning to release under CC BY-SA, so FIFA would be free to use our footage in their commercials, if we got something good (assuming of course they credited us and made their commercial CC BY-SA...they could always license the BY and SA away for their own use too). I also can't imagine that FIFA would take any interest in us recording fan chants.

I am also hoping to get some commentary from various sports reporters from around the world. I have names in mind, but I don't think this is the place to post them until we have something locked up. There's also a possibility that we'll have some sort of partnership with the USSF. I have no problem saying that since, as an USican, if I were to say "we are working with a national federation," it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the most likely source. Let me be clear: there is currently NO relationship with the USSF (or FIFA, for that matter).

Brazil is a huge country, so the video team will probably need to split up into sub-teams. I'm hoping we can get press passes for everyone. I don't know how many teams we can have. Of course, each team plays at least three games, so there's the possibility we could just see each team play once. Having footage from each game that would could use would be great, but might not be the best use of resources. That will depend on interest, which countries are in which cities, and which languages we have covered. My brother is the only one that is for sure going with me. He is who went to the last World Cup with me.

I've got a friend from college that does professional video editing and I am planning on getting him on the team. As we "go to press," I have not heard from him. I have no idea if he adds anything language-wise. I am hoping to get a Spanish-speaker involved too. Again, no names until I have things looked up. We have a team member that speaks some French and some Vietnamese, but she can only go for a couple of weeks (also, Vietnamese is probably useless as Vietnam has already been eliminated from World Cup 2014 Qualification). My brother is the other most-likely team member and he speaks German. There is a large German immigrant population in the south, so that could be useful.

I have thought a bit about the budget, but it's going to be hard to plan too much in advance because prices are likely to be more expensive during the event. As I mentioned before, I think the key is to just guess high on everything.

One thing I have not thought at all about is potential donor gifts. That will be a project for another day. I may or may not test the waters with a post here. We try to keep the content strictly legal here and the way I'm convincing myself this particular post works is that I'm asking for audience participation in identifying legal issues.

While not something that will probably give rise to a legal issue, I also want to mention that I've never done a Kickstarter before, so I don't know how long we can make the project for. It seems like we could collect money up until that December because we wouldn't be able to make decisions until then anyway.

So, what legal issues have I missed or over-looked? Any suggestions on the logistical front? Thanks!

As referenced above, I also want to point people to the two discussions about this project that has started on identi.ca and status.net.




How to get in touch:
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Last.fm usernames: DouglasAWh and revnicklucre.
Libre.fm usernames: douglasawh and nrclark.
Status.Net usernames: douglasawh and nrlucre 
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