Friday’s Endnotes – 12/02/11

December 02, 2011 · · 5 comments

2011 ABA Journal Blawg 100 — I am deeply honored to learn that this site has been selected as one of the top 100 law blogs of the year by the ABA Journal. From the description:

“Terrence Hart’s Copyhype has rapidly established itself as one of the best copyright blogs on the Web,” writes Ben Sheffner, author of the Copyrights & Campaigns blog, which is on hiatus. The site’s clean and spare design echoes the fine print of a contract, and this is fine print you’d actually enjoy reading. Its column Friday’s Endnotes links and summarizes the week’s most relevant copyright news.

You can also vote for your favorite blogs out of the top 100 until December 30th. If you enjoy this site, I hope you cast your vote — Copyhype is in the “IP Law” category.

Copyright Digitization and Public Access Project Blog — The US Copyright Office this week started a blog for its digitization project, “a long term effort to convert non-digital records of copyright ownership and transfers and assignment of rights and to make them widely available online via the web.” The first post lays out some of the challenges of bringing over a century’s worth (nearly 70 million) of copyright documents online.

Court OKs Private Seizure of Domain Names Which Allegedly Sold Counterfeit Goods–Chanel, Inc. v. Does — Eric Goldman reports on a federal court’s recent grant of a preliminary injunction against 200 domain names alleged to be engaged in the sale of counterfeit Chanel goods. The twist: the court order mimics the type of relief that parts of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act would have provided for. Notably, the court ordered third parties to redirect the domain names and de-index or remove the sites from search results.

ACI Survey Finds Consumers Support More Protection against Pirated Goods and Content — Counterfeit Goods Cited as Reducing Jobs; Harming the Economy — According to the recent survey, ”82% of consumers agreed (including 58% that strongly agreed) that protecting copyrights, trademarks and patents of artists, authors, manufacturers and inventors encourages innovation and creativity, while only 10% disagreed (either somewhat or strongly) with that statement.

British Library newspaper archive puts 300 years of history online — Four million pages from 200 local and regional newspapers in the London area, spanning back to 1700 are now digitized and accessible online. The massive project is expected to be completed in 2020, with over 650 million articles eventually available. Search is free, though there are fees for accessing the actual images.

Defending SOPA — Rep. Lamar Smith, sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, rebuts criticisms of the bill. “The bill defines rogue sites as websites that are dedicated to the facilitation of the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit or pirated goods. Websites like Facebook and YouTube that host user content are not ‘dedicated to’ illegal activity and they certainly do not make a business out of ‘facilitating’ the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit or pirated goods. But if a user posts illegal content on a website like Facebook or YouTube, current law allows rights holders to notify the website to remove the illegal content.”

The End of Free: Web 2.0 Will Squeeze Punters Rotton — Andrew Orlowski notes several good reasons why the Internet free-for-all won’t last forever. “When half a billion people spend more time on Facebook than they do watching TV, Facebook’s current revenue strategy looks miserly and foolish – it makes no sense to leave so much consumer surplus on the table. Businesses are not charities, remember, and nor are their investors.”

Alternative online piracy bill floated — Opponents of SOPA have recently released a draft proposal for alternate rogue sites legislation. The draft suggests remedies similar to SOPA — sans site blocking — but with cases initiated in the International Trade Commission, a US independent agency. More on this when draft legislative language is released.

Accessories after the fact — Though it believes it could use some tweaking, the Economist thinks SOPA is worth fixing. “No matter what the ‘content-should-be-free crowd says, copyright theft robs artists and businesses of their livelihoods.”

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Friday’s Endnotes – 08/12/11

August 12, 2011 · · 1 comment

“The law, like the marketplace, applauds innovators. It rewards the trend-setters, the market-makers, the path-finding non-conformists who march to the beat of their own drums. To foster such creativity, statutes and common law rules accord to inspired pioneers various means of recompense and incentives.”1

Please help UK indie labels harmed in PIAS warehouse fire — One of the many casualties of this week’s riots in London was a warehouse containing inventory for a large number of independent record labels. Many lost large portions of their entire physical inventory. The Create Digital Music blog has additional information on official and third-party efforts to assist the labels and artists affected.

Creative America is seeking stories from those affected by content theft — The new grassroots organization writes: “Don’t forget to share your story about how content theft has affected you or a project you’ve worked on. Email us your story at stories@creativeamerica.org along with your name and studio and/or union affiliation for our upcoming new website and our Facebook and Twitter feeds!”

Authors and press publishers worry about making a living in the digital age — Future of Copyright takes a look at these worries, specifically as explored by Robert Levine in his new book Free Ride and German economist Torben Stühmeier.

New Website for the National IPR Coordination Center — ICE announces a redesigned website for the Center, which coordinates enforcement efforts, investigations, and training between 17 different federal agencies charged with protecting IP rights.

Zediva ‘suspending’ operations; many legal alternatives remain — The streaming site has officially shut down its operations following a federal court imposing a preliminary injunction against it. The MPAA notes the wealth of services where movie fans can watch films online, from iTunes to Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, and VOD offerings from cable and satellite providers.

The Numbers Behind a CreateSpace Bestseller — CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, provides Print On Demand services for authors. How much can writers sell through it? Author Lee Goldberg reports that he was #4 on the fiction bestseller chart at CreateSpace in July … and he had sold 204 copies.

Waiting for Kirtsaeng: the Still Unresolved Tension Between Sections 602 and 109 of the Copyright Act — Last year’s 4-4 split in Costco v. Omega did little to provide guidance for those involved with grey market goods and parallel imports. Andrew Berger looks at three separate cases pending in the 2nd Circuit that must resolve the issues the Supreme Court punted on.

The Greatest Anti-Plagiarism Video I’ve Seen — Entertaining video aimed at educating college students about the dangers of plagiarism. “A Plagiarism Carol” is in Norwegian, but includes English subtitles.

Why Free is so Misunderstood — Faza looks at the strange subset of pundits who champion the “economics of free” as though it were some sort of religious tenet. The reality is that the ideas of loss leaders, promotional giveaways, and giving away the razors and selling the blades have been around for centuries. Creators shouldn’t ignore these ideas, but they also shouldn’t rush into giving away their work because it’s the latest craze.

Hargreaves IP Review – the Response — The Copyright Alliance presents a guest blog from PPL’s Dominic McGonigal looks at the latest UK IP Review, the Hargreaves Report. He notes that the UK’s efforts to reform copyright law are beginning to seem like Groundhog Day: “Another review of IP. Another Report. Another set of Recommendations.”

Footnotes

  1. Louboutin v. Yves Saint Laurent, Decision and Order, No. 11 Civ. 2381 (SDNY Aug. 10, 2011). [↩]
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Lelia Broussard

January 31, 2011 · · 29 comments

I’ve been a fan of singer-songwriter Lelia Broussard since hearing her song ‘Satellite’ on thesixtyone.com and seeing her perform live along with the equally talented Allison Weiss and Bess Rogers.

Like most emerging artists, Lelia makes full use of the internet to promote her music. Besides her website and thesixtyone, she’s on YouTube, Twitter, and  Bandcamp. She has a Kickstarter page to raise funds. And, of course, the tried and true email list.

Earlier this month, Lelia sent out an email to her list. Part of it read:

For those of you new to my music, I have been putting out music and touring since 2005 on an independent basis. I have several records out, a good bit of my music is on Itunes, and my newer CD is in the store on my own website, but if you can’t get enough of my music and want more more more, I recently decided to release a digital collection of all my old records that I have put out and a TON of unreleased rare tunes that I won’t ever release…some acoustic, some live, and some are full on studio recordings that never made it onto a record. However, because of some of the upcoming events and if all goes according to plan, I am only going to be able to offer this for a short time longer.

A few days later, Ms. Broussard followed up with another email. Apparently, many of her fans thought she had meant she was giving away all this music for free. Not so.

What followed was an impassioned message about the struggle musicians like Lelia face getting to the point where they can sustain a musical career.

I do give away a lot of music to my fans, when you join the email list and throughout the year and will absolutely keep doing that, no question! But I can’t give away everything!! #youguys

Please hear me out for a sec on this. I am at this moment in time, a very poor, underpaid musician. Right now, I am not even permanently living anywhere…it may sound like a jet set life, traveling here and there for shows, but believe me, its not! I wouldn’t trade if for anything, I can’t NOT make music, I just have to…but there you go, that’s the truth, not so glamarous and jet setty! #newword

Even if I were on a major record label, that could still be the case. Unless I start selling out much bigger clubs than I am currently playing, I am losing money when I go out on tour, and unless I independently sell at least 10,000 records, I am barely breaking even on putting out a record because of all the costs that come with that.

That is why you see me busting my ass doing fund  raising along with music, it’s the only way for me to fund my life and continue to write and record, and tour, and its how I am able to pay for some PR, radio campaigns, keeping all the things running that I do have. I haven’t raised enough for all of those things yet, but am working on it, which is why I keep at it like this and ask for support.

A lot of people just simply do not buy music anymore, they just illegally download it. I don’t like it, my musician friends don’t like it, but we realize its part of our world now, so we try to do  and release music/things that fans might want that they can’t get elsewhere and  that they would purchase, because they do want to support us.

I think Lelia’s message highlights some important points. The question of illegal downloading is often cast as generational, with young people seeing it as a way of life. It is also often framed as only an industry problem: corporate suits wanting to control culture versus new artists embracing the “benefits” of piracy. These are useful narratives for proponents of weaker copyright, but as Lelia attests to, they don’t necessarily hold up when compared to reality.

Although Lelia sells her music online, she also provides a good deal of it for free, either streaming or available for download. Some musicians choose to give all their music away online, others don’t even allow digital downloads for sale. Which is the best choice? I don’t know. But the bottom line is that it should remain the artist’s choice. Many copyright critics would rather take that choice away from artists, gussied up in a “it’s for your own good” argument.

Becoming a full-time musician is tough work. Yes, people would still create without the copyright incentive. But that’s not the best way to ensure our lives are enriched with the songs and sounds that connect with us emotionally and give us meaning. And as much as the internet has opened up new avenues for artists to connect with their fans, twitter followers, touring, and t-shirts are not enough to sustain a musical career.

Crafting good music often involves talents beyond that of individual artists like Lelia — talents of people like producers and engineers. Getting that music heard requires the investment of a great deal of time and money, and it also is aided greatly by other talented individuals like video producers and promoters.

Creativity provides many benefits. The question lurking beneath the copyright debates is “where should those benefits go?” Should they all flow to those looking for a cheap way to fill up their iPods and web sites looking for cheap ways to attract traffic and sell ads? Or should the law ensure that some of those benefits go back to those who devote their time and talents to create?

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