It seems, from the example of the RIAA, that copyright enforcement can be the last vestiges of a dying business model. Gripping to government created monopoly has postponed the demise of record labels that is becoming evident from the recent developments concerning Nine Inch Nails and Madonna.

Two recent developments show that the internet’s effects on the music industry is being mirrored in the textbook business. At the beginning of this school year, the Harvard Coop bookstore was reportedly kicking out students who were writing down book prices for online comparison shopping. The management claimed copyright over the prices, but public outcry, led by Harvard’s own, seems to have mitigated the issue. After all, one can’t copyright facts.

More recently, the Follett Higher Education Group has sued Ugenie. Follett, purveyor of textbooks to many college students (including me), claims that Ugenie has violated both the Terms of Service and the DMCA by “scrapping” prices from the efollett.com site and providing comparison price shopping services. Wired’s Threat Level blog details the charges here. And a useful analysis of the intellectual property claim is here.

While the merits of the case are up for debate, I think it is clear that the consumer (students) are set to lose if Follett prevails. Both the Coop and Follett are attempting to use government created monopoly to limit competition and as anyone who has taken Econ 101 can tell you, a lack of competition means higher prices - in this case, for the textbooks which are already so expensive.

Yesterday, Google introduced its automatic copyright filter for YouTube. The service will compare user-submitted content against copyright owner-submitted content. Content submitted by users which matches that of the copyright owners will be flagged for either: blocking, promoting or revenue sharing.

As I have said before, a binary solution to a non-binary problem is dangerous. The issue of copyright is not black or white - principles like fair use make copyright a subjective matter of which a computer is not the best judge.

According to Gigi Sohn at Public Knowledge, a few seconds of matching will not be sufficient to block the submitted video, but because fair use can be much longer than a few seconds (think about the documentary Outfoxed), this places a previously absent burden upon YouTube users.

Before these binary solutions, copyright owners needed to challenge reuses they thought were not fair use. Now, citizens need to justify their fair use.

As you may already know, Students for Free Culture was in the New York Times on Wednesday (File-Sharing Students Fight Copyright Constraints), which made us very happy except for some inaccuracies that crept into the article. Here is the letter to the editor that my fellow Board member Elizabeth Stark sent to the NY Times in response, and which happily was published:

Free in Speech, Not Cost

In “File-Sharing Students Fight Copyright Constraints” (Education page, Oct. 10), Students for Free Culture is portrayed as an organization that promotes the illegal consumption of music and movies free of cost. In fact, we deeply believe that authors and creators should be compensated for their work, and we are eager to promote ways to do so in an environment where the world can build upon their creations.

For example, an author may release a book under a free copyright license, spurring on sales, or a band may allow fans to share and remix their songs, selling out concerts as a result.

We stand for a culture where everyone has the right to participate and where works are made available for all to legitimately access, share and remix. This is a culture that is “free as in speech” — not necessarily one that is free of charge.

Elizabeth Stark
Cambridge, Mass., Oct. 10, 2007

The writer is a founder of the Free Culture Group at Harvard.

(Elizabeth has released the letter under a Creative Commons Attribution license.)

There are some other incorrect facts and misleading implications in the article (which we may address in future posts), but we’re just glad to have mainstream media recognize the importance of the free culture movement as a whole and Students for Free Culture in particular, even if they don’t seem to fully understand what “free culture” means.

One result of the new bylaws that our chapters just ratified is that our name is changing officially from “FreeCulture.org” to “Students for Free Culture”. While we finish the name change, there will be a period where our branding is inconsistent and confusing… we apologize in advance!

One problem that we’ve run into repeatedly in the past is that people have been confused about the exact nature of our organization upon hearing our name. For example, at our last US national conference, many people showed up who were not aware that we were a student organization, and many of them didn’t figure this out until the end of the conference. This name change reaffirms our focus on student activism on campuses across the country and around the world.

There has been some talk about starting an alumni organization for people who have graduated and are no longer involved with a chapter, as well as talk about starting a separate organization that is open to anyone regardless of whether they are a student or involved with a university community or not. If either of those things happen, you can rest assured that you will read about it here. Until then, we will put our efforts into educating and organizing the next generation of movers and shakers, and do that one thing to the best of our abilities.

I’m pleased to announce that the new FreeCulture.org bylaws have been approved by our beloved chapters. The bylaws require no quorum and simply that 3/4 of the votes given by registered chapters be in support of their approval. (Earlier today I misunderstood those bylaws and thought that 3/4 of the chapters must actually vote. I’d like to apologize again for that. That’s probably the first substantive misinterpretation of the bylaws, and I wonder if it will be the last.)

The votes are: 13 for, 1 against, and 4 votes I couldn’t count in the real total. This brings to a close a hard process that I dropped out of because it was so hard, and it should set the stage for more clarity in the role and activity of FreeCulture.org. Here are the votes I received in no particular order:

Chapters voting for the bylaws were: UNC Chapel Hill, Swarthmore College, Brown Free Culture, the American University in Cairo, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NYU, Virginia Tech, University of Southern California, Chadwick Free Culture, Seattle University Law Free Culture, Florida State University, Northeastern Free Culture, Free Culture 5C.

Chapters voting against the bylaws were: Harvard College.

Groups not yet registered with us but sending in votes (all were for ratification) claimed to represent: Northwestern University, Monterrey, University of Chicago.

Chapters voting late (all were for ratification): Columbia University.

It’s been a pleasure receiving your votes, even as I am now embarrassed that I urged some of you to vote under the misunderstanding that a quorum of 3/4 of the chapters was necessary.

(One thing I’ve learned from this, which I secretly already knew, is that the chapter registration system is confusing. Sorry about that, too.)

UPDATE: Nelson sez: If you’re wondering why passing the bylaws was good/important, you might want to check out Gavin Baker’s comments on the bylaws.