A Little Bit of Laches Goes a Long Way (via Volokh Conspiracy) — On January 21, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Though the issue involves laches, the case arises out of a claim of copyright infringement, so you’re sure to hear about it in the next several weeks if you follow copyright issues. Here is an interesting and informative look at the issues here.
The Google Book project: is it fair use? — Attorney Barry Sookman has an excellent and thorough analysis of last November’s district court decision in the Google Books litigation. He follows that with some pointed questions about the court opinion.
My Songs = Your Instagram Photos. A New Trichordist Statement of Purpose — “Your average Internet user is being exploited in exactly same way that the artists are. You are being exploited by exactly the same companies. Ad supported piracy? What’s the difference from “shared endorsementsâ€? They take something that belongs to you without your permission. They then sell advertising against it and keep all the money without letting you set the price—much less paying you a share of the revenue.”
Top MPAA Lawyer on Google’s Failures, Suing Kim Dotcom and Obama After SOPA (Q&A) — Interesting interview. “I’ve been in this game for close to 15 years dealing with the Kim Dotcoms of the world, by whatever name they call themselves. And they all position themselves as a champion of something because it doesn’t sell papers for them to position themselves for what they are — people who just slap together some crude technology to make as much money as quickly as they can before they get caught and then run and hide.”
Google’s Knowledge Graph Boxes: killing Wikipedia? — Here is another example of how Google embraces free and open to build its market share, and then uses the resulting dominance to close off competitors. “The sad irony is that Google is very much for-profit, while Wikipedia is non-profit. Google has donated several million tax-exempt dollars to support Wikipedia in the past, and the Wikimedia Foundation thought that was a lovely series of gifts at the time. But now, Google has figured out a way to take that same Wikipedia content and “import†it directly into Google’s own Knowledge Graph space, where it can be surrounded by advertisements that put money back in Google’s pocket. And if these recent Wikipedia traffic statistics are to be trusted, the shift of Wikipedia “knowledge†over to Google may be exactly what is simultaneously robbing Wikipedia of its readers.”
Understanding Media Markets in the Digital Age: Economics and Methodology — Highly informative. “Viewpoints on such topics as filesharing, copyright enforcement, and digital distribution strategies can be quite polarized. Further complicating the picture, empirical ‘research’ appears to support both sides of the issues on these topics, with one example being the fact that some studies suggest that piracy harms sales of artistic works while others seem to suggest that piracy may be beneficial toward these sales. But not all ‘research’ is created equal.”
Google’s Spymasters Are Now Worried About Your Secrets — Wait, are you telling me there might be a downside to this idea of “permissionless innovation”? “Google has turned once private data into a commodity routinely exploited for profit. No wonder these executives are now made uncomfortable when old-fashioned dictators appropriate the snooper culture of the new technology.”
“A Little it of Laches�
Fixed, thanks!
Many years ago (2007) I noticed that a number of sites on Blogger were systematically scraping images from flickr and surrounding them with google ads. Despite complaints the images remained, as did the Google adsense accounts, as did the blogger account. Also at the time Google required either a takedown to be either posted or or a faxed. Not easy for someone outside the US. All of it seemed designed to keep the content visible on Google properties and to rake the ad money for as long as possible. My conclusion at the time was that, contrary to general opinion, Google were not good citizens in the online world. Things moved on and it has become clear that this is a quasi-criminal company that exploits the cracks between national jurisdictions.
In the early part of last year I decided to block them from scraping images from my site. It has taken a while but I think that we are entering the home straight. Compare and contrast, Google and Bing.
I know it is a miniscule amount of content removal but I’d encourage all content creators to remove their work from Google properties. Let them have myspace selfies, but otherwise turn them black.
Wikipedia is licensed CC-SA-BY, meaning it allows for free redistribution. In fact, the entire puprose of Wikipedia is to create a free content resource usable by anyone, not to drive visitors explictly to a specific domin name to access it (wikipedia.org).
Yeah but, Wikipedia is a catastrophic copyright infringer and enables ALL USERS (and their staff) to engage in slander and theft. “Licensed CC-SA-BY”? You mean “Creative Commons”, right? The atheist version of Canon Law under Jimmy Wales. That license is WORTHLESS when it comes to the USC. It doesn’t even fall under contract law.
Wikipedia violates cybersquating laws (see 15 USC § 1125(d)) and slander of people both living and dead (see YELP, INC., v. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning, Inc. Case No. 0116-13-4. (VA Court of Appeals 2014)
The distribution is not free as a non-profit for Wikipedia. That company is VERY MUCH a for-profit company by both money laundering donations through PayPal and the crdit card companies (see 18 USC § 1960); worse, Jimmy Wales (the porn master who got his start turned, atheist content theft artist for University boards with no jobs after students graduate) constantly claims he will go to ALL ADVERTISEMENTS if he doesn’t get his cash to maintain his servers. In reality, he’s a content-hostage taker and uses it against anyone who wishes to earn an income. Drown him by defunding his “masterpiece” of a website.
When WikiPedia gets mad, they “go black” and the media kissed it. But now with the economy realizing what they are doing, let them go black. Good riddance to that [digital crap] and money laundering.
Ed,
Thanks for the insight. I always suspected Wikipedia was an illegal money laudering website populated with athiest porn masters, but I didn’t have any evidence until now.
LOL. The best [evidence] is to Wikipedia the founder before he decides to break one of [his] unrecognized commandments (see 2013 Year-End Electronic Discovery and Information Law Update from Gibson Dunn).