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Techdirt has published a number of posts that explore the issue of whether art organizations
can stop people sharing images of works in their collections when the
latter are indisputably in the public domain. Even if museums might be
able to claim copyright in their "official" photographic images, the
more important question is whether they ought to. The good news is that
some institutions are beginning to realize that using copyright
monopolies in this way contradicts their basic reason for existing -- to
share the joy of art. Here, for example, is a wonderful statement of
that principle from the Getty Museum entitled "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come":
On
Techdirt.
As we've noted before, many publishers have the crazy attitude that
ebooks shouldn't be lent by libraries, and that it should be made harder for people to access literature in these places if it's in a digital form. Over in the Netherlands, public libraries have had enough of this, and are taking legal action over the issue, as an article in Future of Copyright reports:
On
Techdirt.
Beyond the fact that you are using it to read these words, the Web has undeniably had a major impact on a large part of the world's population. It's certainly one of the greatest inventions of recent times, and as Techdirt has noted before, one of the reasons it has taken off in such an amazing way, and led to so many further innovations, is because Sir Tim Berners-Lee decided not to patent it.
The demonization of file sharing by copyright maximalists blinds many
companies to the fact that it is marketing in its purest form. That's
because people naturally only share stuff they think is good, and thus
everything on file sharing networks comes with an implicit
recommendation from someone. Not only that, but those works that appear
on file sharing networks the most are, again by definition, those that
are regarded mostly highly by the filesharing public as a whole, many of
whom are young people, a key target demographic for most media
companies.
On
Techdirt.
There's plenty of breathless writing about the imminent 3D-printing
revolution, but realistically, what is it likely to mean for most
people? They probably won't all be printing out their own planes, but they may well be printing out small replacement parts for goods they own. Here's an early example of that from the world of electronics, spotted by the Shapeways site:
On
Techdirt.
One of the great divides in the digital world is between those who
believe that people who share files online are selfish, thieving pirates
who just want something for nothing, and those who see them simply as
ordinary people who want to swap cool stuff with the world. The first
group views them as a canker eating at the heart of the music industry,
while the second sees them as providing free marketing to the artists
concerned. What evidence we have supports the latter view -- not least because the music industry is thriving, not dying as you might expect if piracy were a problem.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote
about how the ever-increasing storage capacity of portable hard drives
made it unlikely that the sharing of music could ever be stopped. That
was a somewhat theoretical piece based on general trends in technology;
but here's some supporting data from a rather unusual source: North
Korea (aka the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" - DPRK).
On
Techdirt.
Eben Moglen has been battling to defend key digital rights
for the last two decades. A lawyer by training, he helped Phil
Zimmerman fight off the US government's attack on the use of the Pretty
Good Privacy encryption program in the early 1990s, in what became
known as the Crypto Wars. That brought him to the attention of Richard
Stallman, founder of the GNU project, and together they produced version
3 of the GNU GPL, finally released after 12 years' work in 2006.
On
Techdirt.
At the end of last year we wrote
about the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, former Federal Minister
of Defense in Germany, who lost both his post and his doctorate when it
turned out that he had plagiarized portions of his doctoral thesis. Now
the journal Science is reporting another possible case:
On
Techdirt.
Most people will be familiar with Moore's Law,
usually stated in the form that processing power doubles every two
years (or 18 months in some versions.) But just as important are the
equivalent compound gains for storage and connectivity speeds, sometimes
known as Kryder's Law and Nielsen's Law respectively.
On
Techdirt.
One reason the European Commission decided to refer ACTA to the
European Court of Justice may have been in the hope that people would
simply get bored and move on. It's certainly true that the cities of
Europe aren't full of protesters as they were a couple of months ago,
but that doesn't mean that everything has died down completely. Here,
for example, is one country whose population still has strong feelings on the matter:
On
Techdirt.
We've written
about the hugely-successful Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho many times
before, because he is a great example of an artist embracing piracy as a
boon not a bane. So it's great to see him offering his thoughts on SOPA:
On
Techdirt.
A recent Techdirt post reminded
us that thanks to its crazy copyright laws, the US won't be seeing
anything new in the public domain for many years. But even in those
"fortunate" countries that get to use cultural works a mere 70 years
after the creator's death, the situation is still pretty absurd.
On
Techdirt.
Earlier this week Techdirt reported on the surprisingly forthright statements of Neelie Kroes concerning the failure of the copyright system in the digital world. She made her remarks at the Forum d'Avignon in France, which was about "strengthening the links between culture and the economy".
On
Techdirt.
In the 2005 "Grokster" decision, the Supreme Court ruled
unanimously that file sharing networks could be held liable for
copyright infringement if they take "affirmative steps" to encourage
infringement. Grokster closed down as a result, and the recording industry pretty much assumed it had won that battle
But as a fascinating analysis by Rebecca Giblin of what happened afterwards points out, against the industry's expectations, P2P filesharing flourished:
Techdirt.
There is a general belief that science proceeds by smooth cycles of
discovery and sharing – that scientists formulate theories, investigate
problems, produce data and then publish results for other scientists to
check, reproduce and then build on.
On
Techdirt.
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