'Arts & Culture'
“Fair Use” is a concept of US copyright legislation. In essence it is ‘any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work’1.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association reveals in a study2 about $4.5 trillion of the revenue generated in the US, or 18 percent, and about 17.3 million jobs rely on the fair use exceptions. This revenue is generated by industries such as3:
- manufacturers of consumer devices that allow individual copying of copyrighted programming;
- educational institutions;
- software developers; and
- internet search and web hosting providers.
The figure looks gigantic, and the temptation is high to argue for a small share of revenue for the creators of all that content used under fair use exceptions. However, the exceptions of fair use make quite many economic activities only possible, e.g. software development, which in many cases requires the making of temporary copies of existing programs to facilitate the programming of interoperability, making temporary copies of TV programmes to watch them at a later point in time, or even browsing the web, which requires temporary cache copies of websites on the rendom access memory of the computer — activities that would be extremely hard to monitor in order to collect resonable compensation for the use of copyrighted content, let alone the difficulties of establishing corresponding licensing agreements. Thus, establishing the fair use exemptions in 1976 was a vital ingredient for many industries to grow.
More importantly, it is worthwhile noticing, that it is not only copyright protection that stimulates innovation, creativity and eventually business. Obviously, the “fair use” exemption in the U.S. even outnumbers the potential of the ‘copyright industry’.4 I should add, however, that relying on a fair use exemption requires copyright protection to be established in the first place — and this not in a narrow sophistic sense but in order to make the creation of content viable at all.
- http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html [↩]
- available online at http://www.ccianet.org/artmanager/publish/news/First-Ever_Economic_Study_Calculates_Dollar_Value_of.shtml [↩]
- p. 6, 18-39 and appendix II of the report [↩]
- according to the IIPA-report (http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/20070130-report.pdf), ‘In 2005, the estimated value added for the total copyright industries rose to $1,388.13 billion ($1.38 trillion) or 11.12% of U.S. GDP.’ [↩]
Mindestens seit dem unsäglichen Kuhsommer ’98 sind plastikene Plastiken von Kühen, Bänken, Bären, Fröschen und so fort als temporäres Strassenmobiliar aus dem “Wortschatz” beflissener Stadtmarketing Konsulenten urbaner Metropolen von Zürich über Chicago, New York bis Deggendorf nicht mehr wegzudenken.
Endlich darf sich Rotterdam auch zu dieser Liga zählen — die Elefantenparade. Verspreid over de binnenstad worden zo’n 50 door kunstenaars beschilderde manshoge olifantbeelden tentoongesteld. Die 3 Sorten Elephanten wurden speziell von (namenlosen?) thailändischen Künstlern geschaffen, sind urheberrechtlich geschützt und geistiges Eigentum von Elephant
Parade ltd.
Eine ganze Reihe von Olifanten ist in der Gallery von elephantparade.nl zu sehen.
Creative Commons Netherlands and Buma/Stemra, the collecting society for music authors (composers, textwriters) and music publishers in the Netherlands start a groundbreaking pilot project: music authors will be able to combine the more flexible licensing models of Creative Commons licences with membership of Buma/Stemra. Details will be presented on 23 August 2007 at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam and will be made available at http://www.creativecommons.nl/bumapilot/index.html.
At least two services are out there that offer books and novels to read on Apple’s iPhone. Readdle.com offers the upload of 8 different formats, doc, txt and pdf among them, and a library of “iPhone-optimized classical books by O.Henry, Charles Dickens, Shakespear, Conan Doyle and others”. textoniphone.com “can only be viewed using the iPhone. More than 20,000 books and novels viewable on your iPhone for free.” It also offers document upload for registered users.
Sorry, folks, I have to get that rant off my chest.
First, read this press release from the Conservatives (UK): David Cameron to call for extension in copyright term. Then let me summarize it, as I read it:
“We all agree that you poor music industry loose millions of pounds due to illegal downloading.” — ignoring that the people sharing online obviously see it as the online way of borrowing a CD from a friend.
“We want to give you more and better copyright protection.” — so you can generate more revenue and pay more taxes.
“But in return we want you … to censor antisocial music? — no: to show leadership!” — as long as it shows the same effetcs.
Copyright extension embedded in such words has nothing to do with authors rights. Authors rights are human rights, and the declaration of human rights is based on the belief that humans should be free. Copyright extension sensu David Cameron is brain control using the power and mechanisms of the media industry. And this, eventually, constitutes a breach of human rights.
This is not the kind of copyright we want to be fighting for! And it is not the kind of political support we are keen to get either.
On 19 June in the early morning hours a certain Gabriel aka “go harry” sent an email to seclists.org (a hacker mailing list), allegedly disclosing the ending of the yet to be published next sequel of Harry Potter.1 He claims to have got acces to several computers at publisher Bloomsbury (“It’s amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book.”) and briefly outlines the plot. “We make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring.” Gabriel calls it the “Harry Potter 0day” (zero-day-exploit).
Fellow hackers don’t seem to be impressed too much. Scott writes: “Who are you people and why should I care? Maybe a new exploit would be more useful.”
But there is a good chance, that this whole story is a hoax …
- http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2007/Jun/0380.html [↩]
The Register carries a story on the success of UK Newspapers and their online editions … readers stay faithful to their paper. And online content attracts up to 20 % extra audience … who are, however, not buying the paper (or any paper, for that matter).
Read the whole story here: Newspapers not killed by net – shock!
This is probably the silliest story that came in today: Book publisher steals Google laptops. The CEO of Macmillan Publishers, Richard Charkin, boasts in his blog1 how he nicked two computers from a Google stall at Book Expo America in New York. He admits of feeling “rather shabby playing this trick on Google”. Poor boy.
Reading through the comments at The Register summarizes all the good and bad old arguments and misconceptions about what Google actually does. We’ve touched on the subject elsewhere2.
On Charkin’s blog comments tend to be a bit more diverse. Somebody remarks the difference between criminal law (which deals with such things as theft, murder, etc.) and civil law (which deals with copyright). An important distinction. As is the distinction between authors’ rights and publishers’ income. Charking was not exactly “standing up for authors’ rights”, as one commentor likes to see it. His point was most probably much more about his own business, guessing from the number websites that in one way or another belong to Macmillan3.
On a different note, however, Charkin leaves me wondering — is there really no difference between texts and computers…?
- The heist [↩]
- Google Book Search ‘auf Deutsch’ [↩]
- http://www.macmillan.com/websites.asp [↩]
As a maverick between arts and culture, business, IT, and many more topics that are of minor or even major interest to me I also read the occasional business analysis piece. This morning an essay by Nicolas G. Carr, contributing editor to strateg+business1. The essay is a review of one famous paper by Eric S. Raymond2 entitled The Cathedral and the Bazar.
To fill you in briefly on Raymond’s paper: it was first presented at a Linux conference in Würzburg, Germany, on 22 May 1997. And it caused a major stir; Raymond for the first time put into writing the ethics of the open source community — the bazaar model — where many people contribute to one product, say Linux for example, with seemingly no central control. Raymond contrasts this to the cathedral model where there is a closed group of developers (or authors).
In his review of the paper, 10 years after its initial publication, Nicolas G. Carr says: ‘ The open source model has proven to be an extraordinarily powerful way to refine programs that already exist (…) but it has proven less successful at creating exciting new programs from scratch.’ This is not a new critique, Lawrence Kesteloot noticed the same in an email to Raymond in March 1998.
Actually, even Raymond himself — if one is inclined to actually read the paper — noticed this quite explicitly indeed: ‘It’s fairly clear, that one cannot code from the ground up in bazaar style. One can test, debug and improve in bazaar style, but it would be very hard to originate a project in bazaar mode.’3
So, after ten years of bazaar-hype — which has only recently been picked up by corporations and guru writers4 — it is about time that people actually acknowledge that the bazaar is all about debugging and not about creating, and that there is — despite all the advantages the bazaar model has over the cathedral model (imho) — such a thing as individual creativity.
One last thought — individual creativity is sometimes best harnessed in a collective setting. Or isn’t that how authors publish their books — in exchange with agents, lectors, publishers (call it ‘debugging’ if you want) — or how Brecht wrote ‘his’ plays?
- http://www.strategy-business.com/ [↩]
- http://www.catb.org/~esr/ [↩]
- see http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s10.html and also Raymond’s discussion here [↩]
- Don Tapscott’s and Anthony D. Williams’ Wikinomic is just one example [↩]
DailyLit.org is a new service that sends literary texts (and non-fiction works) to subscribers in email-length junks at a time, daily by default. As of now DailyLit only includes royalty-free works (such as “War and Piece”, it comes in 675 parts, “Phaedra”, 18 parts, or Freud’s “Dream Psychology” (57) and the Communist Manifesto (13)). But soon, so the site claims, they will be offering contemporary literature, DailyLit are in discussion with publishers about including copyrighted works.
“If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please provide DailyLit’s Copyright Agent: copyright [at] dailylit [dot] com” the site tells in its user agreement.
Für gewöhnlich berichte ich ja nicht zu Tagesaktualitäten trivialer Art. Doch heute liefert mir “mannetjesgorilla Bokito” einen lockeren Start. Nicht so für die Zoobesucher. Denn Bokito “onsnappte” heute, kurz vor drei Uhr mittags, vier Personen wurden verletzt, darunter ein Tierwärter, der in Schock fiel. Aufmerksam wurde ich auf das Geschehen, als erst Kranken- und dann Fernsehautos an meinem Fenster vorbeifuhren, als ich eben angefangen hatte, diesen Beitrag zu verfassen. Berichte im AD (’Iedereen rende voor zijn leven…’ und Gewonden door ontsnapte gorilla Bokito), im NOS journal und auf nu.nl führten zur Erklärung der Umstände.
Berichten wollte ich vom gestrigen Konzert von Hassle Hound (Glasgow & Brooklyn). Sie kombinieren Recordings aus allen möglichen und unmöglichen Quellen mit Guitarren, Violine und Stimme zu etwas, was echte Musikkritiker offenbar als “wonky off-kilter avant-pop with bite” bezeichnen. Hmmm…
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, ein Ort mit netten Menschen und einem Flair für exotische Musik cum Film (Elektronik, Avant-Pop, Improv). Und “installiert” ist sozusagen wörtliche zu nehmen. Weil sie das Mauerwerk nicht antasten durften, wurden sämtliche Einbauten in Gerüstform ins Gebäude hineingebaut. Wohl etwa 85 % der ganzen Einrichtung bestehen aus rezyklierten Materialien — ausser dem offensichtlichen Bauholz und den Stahlprofilen dienen ausgediente Autositze als Kinosessel, ausgediente PE-Chemikalientanks (3000 Liter) als WC-Kabinen. Unter http://www.wormstation.nl/ sind Worm-Sounds zu finden. Zur Zeit ist im Worm Global WORMing angesagt. Und dann beherbergt Worm seit kurzem das ehemalige psychoakustische Labor von Philips. Doch dazu ein ander Mal.
