Last Friday morning, I attended a seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy (Irish Times | SiliconRepublic here and here). It was hosted by Google Ireland and co-sponsored the by Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA); and the morning was very ably chaired by TJ McIntyre (blog | Chair, Digital Rights Ireland | Consultant, Merrion Legal | UCD). There were five presentations; in this post, I’ll deal with the first two; in the next tomorrow’s post, I’ll deal with the remaining three; and in a third post, I’ll add a few comments of my own on some of the issues raised by the seminar.
First up was Johnny Ryan (IIEA | author A History of the Internet and the Digital Future) speaking on “A hinge in history: the conditions of the digital future and the need of rights reform”, and setting the scene for the debates that would follow. (Update: Johnny comments below that video of his presentation is now available). For him, we live in the age of the perpetual beta. Before Gutenberg’s printing press, hand-transcribed manuscripts made information fluid. By contrast, after Gutenberg, the printed book fixed information in static form. But now, online, information is very flexible and plastic, again. Consider a wikipedia page: everything is open to challenge and experimentation – and perpetually beta. We are reverting back to the pre-Gutenberg plasticity of information. In historical terms, this is the norm. It is the post-Gutenberg era of fixed information which is the anomaly. Because of the internet, we have moved from a read-only (RO) culture to a read-write (RW) culture, a remix culture, where we can all adapt and re-invent, and this participation can be anywhere: anyone can be Andy Warhol, and the internet can be your Factory. This is the hinge in history of his title.
He argued that as we have moved from a RO to a RW culture, so can we move from RO to RW business. Read the rest of this entry »
For those who have an interest in the copyright travails of Harry Potter, about which I have blogged previously (1 | 2 | 3), Jeremy Phillips has an interesting blogpost on The 1709 Blog:
Word is now spreading about the news that Scottish author JK Rowling and Bloomsbury Publishing have failed in their bid to prevent an unwanted copyright infringement action getting to court. A a 10-day Chancery Division trial is now expected, following today’s ruling by Mr Justice Kitchin herethat Paul Allen, the trustee of the estate of Willy the Wizard author Adrian Jacobs, has an arguable copyright infringement claim against the author and publisher of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
JK Rowling and Bloomsbury (her UK publisher) both deny all of the claims and argued that, since they were groundless, they should be dismissed summarily. However, after an interim hearing in July which lasted three days, Kitchin J has now concluded that the claim may succeed and would not therefore be dismissed at this early stage. … more here
J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, still cannot make a years-old plagiarism charge disappear. A lawsuit in a British court accusing Ms. Rowling of partly copying a 1987 book, “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard,” by Adrian Jacobs, may go to trial now that a judge has turned down an application by Ms. Rowling’s lawyers to dismiss the case, according to Reuters.
Mr. Jacobs’s estate has said that Ms. Rowling’s fourth book in the Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” published in 2000, took plot lines from the “Willy the Wizard” book. Ms. Rowling has vehemently denied the accusation, saying that she had not heard of Mr. Jacobs, who died in 1997, until the copyright claim was made in 2004 and had not read his book. A judge overseeing the case in Britain agreed that the assertions by Mr. Jacobs’s estate are “improbable” but refused to dismiss the suit. Ms. Rowling’s American publisher, Scholastic, said it considers the assertions to be “completely without merit.”
You don’t need to put it in an envelope and send it to yourself. If the work is original, then copyright just vests.
There is no doctrine of fair use outside of the United States. Instead, there is a much more limited doctrine of fair dealing for the purposes of research or criticism.
Just because something has been published on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s in the public domain. There’s a lot less in the public domain than you might think.
Taking a work, and transforming it, still infringes copyright.
Giving credit is important; but if the taking is a copyright infringement, giving credit doesn’t change that fact.
Taking a copyright work, but not charging for your use, will still be an infringement if the taking is a copyright infringement.
The fact that the original author is dead doesn’t mean the work is out of copyright. The copyright term is the life of the author plus seventy years.
Creative Commons is a good development, but it’s just a system of licences or permissions, and it won’t change the copyright world.
I suppose if I spent ages thinking about it, I could find a spurious thread linking three stories that caught my eye over the last few days, but in truth there is none, except that they update matters which I have already discussed on this blog. (Oh, all right then, they’re all about different aspects of freedom of expression: the first shows that copyright should not prevent academic discussion; the second shows that hecklers should not have a veto; and the third is about broadcasting regulation).
First, I had noted the proclivity of the estate of James Joyce to be vigorous in defence of its copyrights; but it lost a recent case and now has agreed to pay quite substantial costs as a consequence:
The James Joyce Estate has agreed to pay $240,000 (€164,000) in legal costs incurred by an American academic following a long-running copyright dispute between the two sides. The settlement brings to an end a legal saga that pre-dates the publication in 2003 of a controversial biography of Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, written by Stanford University academic Carol Shloss. …
The proposed visit of the controversial historian David Irving to the NUI, Galway Literary & Debating Society has been cancelled. In a statement the Lit & Deb said the cancellation was “due to security concerns and restrictions imposed by the university authorities”. …
Roll up, roll up, for the next great online copyright bout. In the red corner, weighing in at almost 153 years old, is the venerable National Portrait Gallery, an institutional heavyweight if ever there was one. In the blue corner, weighing in at just over 8 years old, is the upstart Wikipedia, a sprightly bantamweight which has bulked up considerably in recent years and now packs a hefty punch. The fight is over whether Wikipedia has infringed the Gallery’s copyright in recently-created digital images of portraits which are out of copyright. A piece on this by TechnoLlama (Andres Guadamuz) – including the choice of image, though its subject has previously appeared on this blog – is too good to pass up (links in original):
Several news sites have reported an interesting copyright case involving the Wikimedia Foundation and the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in Britain. The NPG undertook a £1 million GBP digitisation exercise, and placed high-definition versions of their pictures in a database locked with technological protection measures. Derrick Coetzee, a volunteer for the Wikimedia Foundation, accessed the database, circumvented the protection, and uploaded 3,300 NPG pictures to Wikimedia Commons. The original portraits are in the public domain, so it would be a fair assumption that pictures of the originals would not have copyright either. However, the NPG disagreed, and sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mr Coatzee alleging copyright infringement, database right infringement, circumvention of technological protection measures, and breach of contract. This is an interesting legal issue for many reasons, chiefly because the legal status of pictures of public domain paintings is not clear in UK copyright law.
… To conclude, this is an interesting legal case for many reasons. … I believe that the NPG would have a difficult time in court, with the exception of the contractual case, but as I said, many of the legal issues are completely open in the UK. In a selfish way, I wish the case would be litigated, as it would provide us with some interesting precedent in the case of originality of copies of public domain works, and also on the issue of browse-wrap agreements.
The Bill to reform Ireland’s libel laws is likely to be enacted within a fortnight, three years after it was published. The Defamation Bill was introduced by then minister for justice Michael McDowell in 2006 to repeal the existing legislation which dates from 1961.
The original government decision to approve the drafting of the new Bill was made as far back as June 2005 … the remaining stages of the Bill will be taken in the Dáil and Seanad over the next two weeks, with the Bill expected to complete its passage through the Oireachtas on July 10th, the last sitting day before the summer recess.
After dragging their heels for so long, this is to be achieved by means of a legislative guillotine:
A guillotine on housing legislation allowed just one minute and 20 seconds for each of the 170 amendments to be dealt with, Labour whip Emmet Stagg told the Dáil in repeated criticism of end-of-term deadlines. …
A further sotry in the same edition of the Irish Times lists Bills which are likely to be guillotined, including the Defamation Bill:
The Government will “guillotine” debate on at least 17 Bills in the last three weeks of the Dáil before the summer recess, Opposition parties have claimed. According to the whips for Fine Gael and Labour, the Government is rushing an unprecedented number of Bills through the Dáil between now and July 10th and forcing votes without allowing proper debate. … The schedule of legislation includes two separate Criminal Justice Bills, legislation for the €200 second home tax, an Aviation Bill, the Health Insurance Bill, the Bill for the second Lisbon referendum, the Bill ending pensions paid to serving Ministers, as well as the concluding stages of the Defamation Bill.
I’m not really in favour of legislative guillotines, but I’m prepared to make an exception for this long-delayed Bill, which has many serious flaws but is still on balance much better than the current position. Roll on July 10th!
There is a tension at the heart of creativity. On the one hand, I might be moved by the muse to write/paint/create something interesting (I know, if you’ve read anything on this blog, you might wonder if that muse has ever struck, but bear with me). If I am, the law is likely to reward me for doing so by giving me a copyright (or similar intellectual property right) in what I have written/painted/created. On the other hand, the muse might strike you in such a way as to develop what I have done (entirely plausible, if you ask me), but my copyright protection can make this hard for you. You could email me and ask me if I’d let you do it, and I’d probably say yes. But now, multiply this a million million fold, to take into account everyone who has copyright and everyone who wants to develop a copyrighted work. Asking for individual permission every time becomes a logistical nightmare. So, Creative Commons has filled the gap, by drafting licences which any copyright holder may use to determine how others may exercise their copyright rights. If you look below the last post at the bottom of this page, you will see that I use just such a licence to allow you to use and share the contents of this blog, provided that you do so for non-commercial reasons and give me an attribution.
The terms of this licence are drafted having regard to US copyright law, which is similar to Irish copyright law in the same way as close cousins are similar: there is a strong family resemblance, but thereareveryimportantdifferences. The similarities are enough that I can reasonably use the US text, and I do; but it would be better to have a version drafted specifically to take Irish law into account. As I have mentioned previously on this blog, for some time now, Dr Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley of the Law Faculty, UCC have been working on just such a draft of an Irish Creative Commons Licence.
We are now fortunate to have the next fruits of that labour, as theyhavejustannouncedthat an Irish draft of the Creative Commons license version 3.0 is now available for public discussion, on either their mailing list or their blog. They have taken the existing US Creative Commons v3.0 licence and localised it to Irish conditions in the light of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here) as amended in 2004 (also here) and 2007 (also here).
They have produced a good summary (pdf) of their reasoning for the various changes they recommend. It seems to me thorough, comprehensive, and persuasive – all in all, an excellent piece of work which will benefit the entire Irish online community. I eagerly look forward to the day when I make this blog subject to the Irish version of the licence. In the meantime, click on the widget below:
Not only are early incarnations of Mickey Mouse no longer covered by copyright, but as of 1 January last, neither is Popeye (King Features page | Popeye.com | wikipedia), at least in the EU. According to The Times:
“I yam what I yam,” declared Popeye. And just what that is is likely to become less clear as the copyright expires on the character who generates about £1.5 billion in annual sales.
From January 1, the iconic sailor falls into the public domain in Britain under an EU law that restricts the rights of authors to 70 years after their death. Elzie Segar, the Illinois artist who created Popeye, his love interest Olive Oyl and nemesis Bluto, died in 1938. .. The copyright expiry means that … anyone can print and sell Popeye posters, T-shirts and even create new comic strips, without the need for authorisation or to make royalty payments. …
… the question of whether any company can now attach Popeye’s famous face to their spinach cans will have to be tested in court.
While the copyright is about to expire inside the EU, the character is protected in the US until 2024. US law protects a work for 95 years after its initial copyright.
The Popeye trademark, a separate entity to Segar’s authorial copyright, is owned by King Features, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation which is expected to protect its brand aggressively. …
Moreover, Likelihood of Confusion predicts that the US Congress might be persuaded yet again to extend that copyright period (though there must surely be limits to the US Supreme Court’s forbearance in this matter). In the meantime, as Techdirt (hat tip Peter Black) observes, “what happens with Popeye in the UK may be a rough guide as to what will happen should Mickey Mouse hit the public domain”.
Posted elsewhere (some of my recent posterous posts)
My posterous site is a companion to this blog: anything that catches my eye on the wild wild web that's too long for twitter but too short for a normal post here will (probably - eventually) end up over there.
Last Friday morning, I attended a seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy (Irish Times | SiliconRepublic here and here). It was hosted by Google Ireland and co-sponsored the by Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA); and the morning was very ably chaired by TJ McIntyre (blog | Chair, Digital Rights Ireland | Consultant, Merrion Legal | UCD). There were five presentations; in this post, I’ll deal with the first two; in 
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