Marybeth Peters comes around: Boing Boing has video of the U.S. Copyright Office director saying copyright lasts too long.
I think [the term of copyright] is too long. I think that was probably a big mistake…
If you haven’t yet, be sure to sign our pledge to boycott DRM. The deadline is 6 February, just a few days away.
In under 1 month, nearly 3,500 people have pledged to never buy a CD with DRM. We far surpassed our initial goal of 500, but the more signatures, the stronger the message to the music industry. Please join us and pledge to boycott DRM—and ask your friends to do the same.
Nelson and I first met Kai at the “Free Culture Phase 2″ event organized at American University in May 2005, where he was one of the organizers working with AU’s Prof. Kathryn Montgomery in the School of Communications. Kai has also been a writer for Die Gegenwart, a German online magazine; more recently he’s started his own blog, Freihoch3. On Friday he published “The EFF is our mother”, an interview with me on free culture and the free culture movement, as well as FC.o and the international dimensions of free culture activism. Check it out—interview is in English, introduction in German.
As we head into the last few days before Christmas and Hannukah (a.k.a. “the busiest shopping days of the year”), just a reminder: If you’re looking for any last many gifts, be sure to consult our RIAA-Free Gift Guides before you make any music purchases. Vote with your dollar, and give a gift you can feel good about.
Best fishes,
Gavin
This is old news now, but I want to talk about it anyway.
Last month, American University released a document called Best Practices in Fair Use. Authored by filmmaker groups and endorsed by more, the guide lays out principles for “best practices” when dealing with the fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law.
The plight of fair use, particularly in the realm of documentary filmmaking, is well documented — see for example Chapter 7 of Lessig’s Free Culture. When I first heard about this project in May, I immediately recognized it as work of great value. I’m glad to hear it’s come to fruition.
Since the statement is approved by filmmakers themselves, they can read the statement and adopt its principles without doubt: they know the authors are looking out for their best interest. This is a powerful tool: not just for filmmakers who want to use the work of another, but on the supply side as well. Not only does this document inform filmmakers of their rights, it informs them of their obligations as well. Not only will this embolden filmmakers when they receive a cease & desist letter or are told they have to get permission to quote in their film — hopefully this will reduce the number of cease & desist letters sent in the first place.
The excellent work of the Center for Social Media and the Program on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest will go a long way in encouraging education and discussion of copyright, particularly among the creators themselves.
The free culture student movement can help spread this document within their campus communities and ensure its wide reach. And we should.
The model of “best practices” for fair use did not originate in this report, and the model does not have to end here. Fair use is intentionally an open-ended doctrine, the grease that keeps the wheels of copyright turning: Congress hates to codify it and tends to do a poor job of it besides. Case law can be complex, unclear, contradictory — and the only way to be totally sure of something is a slow, expensive, and risky process. So the model of developing sector-wide statements of best practices makes particular sense for fair use. And the process of developing, adopting, and implementing these best practices is an enlightening one itself, and turns the question of “How should the law work?” into a very tangible one.
If I may, I’d like to suggest one field where this is desperately needed: academia.
As students, this hits particularly close to home for us. But in the academy, where information is the key commodity, there is far too little understanding and too little discussion of fair use. The prime example here would be the Association of American University Presses’ response to the Google Print program (now called “Google Book Search”). The AAUP is the group that represents the publishing houses of U.S. universities and university systems (including mine); as such, AAUP is ostensibly bound to universities’ commitment to work for the public good and increase access to information. But AAUP’s stand with the Authors Guild and their lawsuit to kill Google Print evinces AAUP’s true loyalties: to copyright maximalism, control, and profit over the public good.
I suspect this is a case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing, rather than all the universities represented by AAUP actually being in the maximalist camp. But universities must protect themselves: they should be sure that all their activities are furthering (or at least not attacking) their central goals. Therefore it seems appropriate to develop a model for university-wide best practices, inviting all the parties to take part in the process: researchers, administrators, publishers, and students.
Two big stories this week in the quest toward open access in scientific research and publishing:
Of course, Peter Suber’s Open Access News is the (in-depth) blog of record for news about open access. To learn more about open access, see Peter’s excellent overview.
Today I stumbled across this museum of obscure patents. Consider, for example:
May these fine examples of entrepreneurship brighten your day.
An update on our Cereal Solidarity campaign: We’ve finished collecting signatures on our No Business Method Patents petition — with over 300 signatures online — and we’re moving on to phase 2.
In the coming days, we’ll be drafting letters to deliver the petition to its targets. We’ll ask Cereality to make nice and withdraw their ridiculous patent application; we’ll ask the Patent Office to reject the patent if Cereality doesn’t; and we’ll ask Congress to eliminate business method patents for good.
In other news, there’s an article about Cereality and Cereal Solidarity in today’s Daily Pennsylvanian, the student paper at the University of Pennsylvania. The article, “Cereality warns potential copycats,” highlights the growth of other cereal bars across the U.S. In other words: lots of people will be in danger if this patent goes through.
The article also talks about Cereality’s trademarks. For the record, let me say that (IMHO and AFAIK) Cereality hasn’t done anything wrong with their trademarks. For instance, the article mentions a café in Iowa called Cerealogy that changed its name to avoid trademark infringement. That seems like a pretty good case to me: the names are rather similar, and there’s probably a good likelihood of consumer confusion, especially considering Cereality calls its employees “cerealogoists”. (If you can show me that the word “cerealogy” has been in general use for a long time, I might change my mind.)
In other words, we’re not anti-Cereality, nor are we anti-”intellectual property” (though we don’t like the term very much). I think Cereality is a good concept, and from what I’ve seen, it looks like a well-run business. We just think Cereality made a mistake when they decided to apply for a patent — and we think business method patents are a mistake all around.
In fact, I’m prepared to throw my support behind Cereality if they withdraw their application and join the growing coalition of voices against business method patents. We don’t want to be confrontational, especially if we don’t have to. I hope Cereality does the right thing.
On Thursday, Oct. 27 there’s a talk on Parliament Hill in Ottawa about Bill C-60, Canada’s proposed copyright bill. Russell McOrmond has a set of instructions on how to invite your MP.
Thursday, October 27
7:45 – 9 am
Parliamentary Restaurant, 6th Floor, Centre Block
more details here
Our campaign to end business method patents, Cereal Solidarity, is picking up steam. After being covered on Boing Boing and in Public Knowledge‘s e-mail newsletter, it’s filtering its way into the public consciousness.
After only a few days, our online petition has over 200 signatures. Most of those come from the U.S., but a few originate abroad — from over a dozen other countries. This is a nice reminder that in most of the world, business method patents don’t exist — and rightly so!
Our message with Cereal Solidarity is that patents are not a God-given right, they are a government instrument obliged to serve the public interest. This theme is at the core of everything we do to combat the massive, unprecedented expansion of so-called “intellectual property protections”: that copyright, patents, et al. are not property at all, but rather limited state-granted monopolies to encourage creativity and innovation. That’s the view the U.S. Constituion takes, and it’s the only one that can protect individual freedoms and drive economic growth in the 21st century.
The IP maximalists don’t get it. They want a government hand-out; they’re aiming for a full-scale land grab, and so far, they’ve been pretty successful. But capitalism relies on the freedom to compete — and that’s exactly what the maximalists don’t want. If economies worldwide are to remain competitive in the next century, if new businesses are to have a fair chance against established corporations, and if individual user freedoms are to survive, we have to reject that worldview. We must keep the perspective that intellectual policy comes as part of the overall social contract between governors and the governed — that they must serve the public interest.
Right now, business method patents help neither consumers nor businesses. Just ask Bowls owner Rocco Monteleone. Or any of the other cereal bars popping up around the country. Or the Nonprofit Innovation Alliance, fighting to make sure that charities can do their work without having to navigate a patent minefield. For perspective, consider this piece from Business Week citing a recent survey that technology companies rank third in the average number of lawsuits faced — and that tech companies have the most in-house attorneys managing litigation.
Whether cereal bars or search engines, these are the vanguard of the future economy. These are the businesses lauded as the innovators, the movers and shakers, the wave of the future. But IP maximalism chills innovation, shuts it down, lock out newcomers and outsiders — it’s government protectionism of the lowest order. It discriminates precisely against the businesses who can move things forward — and it hurts our competitiveness as a society.
We know this. Now let’s make them listen. Sign the petition and tell Congress to make the law work for the public interest: end business method patents now.