By Cory Doctorow at 1:47 pm Friday, May 25
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For many years, Google has published a "Transparency Report" with the number of non-copyright-related takedown notices it receives from governments, police, courts, individuals and corporations. Now, the company have added copyright takedowns to the mix. Sadly (and weirdly), this part of the report isn't searchable, as Alan at Copyfight notes: "I cannot search to see if someone has requested that, say, material owned by me be removed from any domain. This is important because in the past organizations that didn't actually own copyrights sent takedown notices. Only a copyright holder should be entitled to do that. Like any other 'big data' source the uses to which these data could be put are varied, but lack of search will hamper most efforts."
Today we’re expanding the Transparency Report with a new section on copyright. Specifically, we’re disclosing the number of requests we get from copyright owners (and the organizations that represent them) to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content. We’re starting with search because we remove more results in response to copyright removal notices than for any other reason. So we’re providing information about who sends us copyright removal notices, how often, on behalf of which copyright owners and for which websites. As policymakers and Internet users around the world consider the pros and cons of different proposals to address the problem of online copyright infringement, we hope this data will contribute to the discussion.
For this launch we’re disclosing data dating from July 2011, and moving forward we plan on updating the numbers each day. As you can see from the report, the number of requests has been increasing rapidly. These days it’s not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009. In the past month alone, we received about 1.2 million requests made on behalf of more than 1,000 copyright owners to remove search results. These requests targeted some 24,000 different websites.
As TechDirt points out, many of the takedown notices that Microsoft sent to Google were for sites that were not removed from Bing, Microsoft's competing search engine.
Copyright Removal Requests – Google Transparency Report
Transparency for copyright removals in search (Google Blog)
(via Copyfight)
By Cory Doctorow at 7:43 am Friday, May 25
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Dish Networks, the satellite TV provider, is being sued by Fox over its "AutoHop" feature, which automatically skips commercials. Fox alleges copyright infringement, which is a repeat of the claims over ReplayTV, which was bankrupted in similar lawsuits in the last decade. The networks claimed then that the whole program, including the commercials, were a single copyrighted work, and that by automatically enabling the skipping of certain sections, the device manufacturers were making derivative works. It's a really dumb theory of copyright and it's hard to imagine that it would hold up in court -- and if it did, it would mean that, for example, allowing screen-in-screen, or changing aspect ratios, or even custom color balances or audio mixes were also copyright violations, and that these violations took place when the feature was enabled by the manufacturer (who would therefore be liable) and not when the customer turned them on.
A more likely claim from Fox is breach of contract -- it's easy to believe that Fox put a "no skipping the commercials" line in their deal with Dish (and if they didn't, you can bet they will). Moreover, the DRM used in satellite receivers is controlled by the big rightsholders, and the license agreement for that DRM (much of which is a secret) allows them to demand arbitrary control over features in devices that can decode it.
Here's more from the LA Times and Meg James and Joe Flint:
Fox filed its copyright violation and breach-of-contract suit against Dish on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Dish filed its suit in U.S. District Court in New York.
"The suit asks for a declaratory judgment that the AutoHop feature does not infringe any copyrights that could be claimed by the major networks, and that Dish, while providing the AutoHop feature, remains in compliance with its agreements with the networks," the Englewood, Colo., company said in a statement.
While consumers with digital video recorders can fast-forward through commercials of recorded shows, Dish's AutoHop takes it a step further. The screen goes black when a commercial break appears. A few seconds later, the program returns. The service can't be used on live programming, such as a sporting event, even after it has been recorded.
With more than 14 million subscribers, Dish Network Corp.'s new technology may threaten the networks' ability to continue to charge premiums for their commercial time.
Fox sues Dish over ad-blocking feature; Dish fires back
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am Friday, May 25
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Richard Katz, a NYC lawyer, has lost his breach-of-contract lawsuit against a pricey healthclub that changed its breakfast menu. Katz was a member of The Setai Wall Street Club and Spa, and he was upset when the yogurt and cereal normally provided by the club was discontinued. He sent a series of upset emails to the club's manager, who cancelled his membership. Katz sued, citing damages in excess of $100,000, and an additional $5,000 in damages for an alleged libel from the manager, who wrote an email in response and is alleged to have shown it to a third party. Lowering the Bar has more:
To me, the great thing about this email is not that a lawyer got furious over somebody failing to dish up the yogurt and cereal. It's that even in the grip of this fury, he still wrote "two (2) weeks." Why do people do this? Maybe it made sense when things were written in longhand, but now that we have email and printers and whatnot there is generally not much controversy over what "two" is supposed to mean. If you haven't picked up this habit yet, don't...
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Coin dismissed the case this week, according to the New York Daily News. While there seems to have been no written opinion, according to the manager's attorney the judge told Katz at the hearing that "he should be ashamed of himself" for filing the suit. That's hearsay, but the judge did order Katz to pay $440 in costs, which suggests what she thought of the case. The manager's attorney praised the decision for throwing out a case that was "embarrassing to the profession."
Lawyer's Defective-Breakfast Suit Dismissed
(Image: Yogurt freak, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from dan4th's photostream)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:54 pm Thursday, May 24
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James Losey from the New America Foundation writes, "I wanted to share New America Foundation's president Steve Coll's reasoning as to why he is leaving the Facebook. He analyzes a range of concerns including privacy concerns, a chaotic IPO, questionable corporate-governance system, mixed with a lack of user rights. "
I established a Facebook account in 2008. My motivation was ignoble: I wanted to distribute my journalism more widely. I have acquired since then just over four thousand 'friends'--in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Middle East, and of course, closer to home. I have discovered the appeal of Facebook's community--for example, the extraordinary emotional support that swells in virtual space when people come together online around a friend's illness or life celebrations.
Through its bedrock appeals to friendship, community, public identity, and activism--and its commercial exploitation of these values--Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation's social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy. Then came this month's initial public offering of stock--a chaotic and revealing event--which promises to put the whole enterprise under even greater pressure.
I quit FB a few years back. I felt like it took a lot more from me than it gave me.
Leaving Facebookistan
(Thanks, James!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:43 pm Wednesday, May 23
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My wife Alice quit her job a year ago to found Makies with some friends in London and Helsinki. Makies is a 3D printing startup. The company's mission is to create toys and dolls from "playful" digital environments (games, social systems, stuff like that). Essentially, the idea is that you create digital people, along with their clothes and accessories, and play with them online, and at the press of a button, you can order these things as physical objects that get custom produced by a local supplier and shipped straight to you. The idea is to build a business that inspires makers, hackers and crafters -- for example, the dolls' heads are designed to take an Arduino Lilypad, should you have such a notion.
After a lot of experimentation and design iteration, they've gotten to the point where they can reliably produce and ship 10-inch custom action dolls using suppliers here in London, and they want to alpha test it against the real world, so they're selling 100 of these dolls to see how the whole thing works. There are just a few left now -- Alice didn't want me to blog this until all the people who'd signed up for the mailing list and all the friends and family had had a crack at the inventory. You can also play with the doll creator without buying the actual doll. They've learned a ton in a just a few days, and they're looking for more of your feedback.
Makies
By Cory Doctorow at 10:37 am Wednesday, May 23
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Musician Amanda Palmer, whose Kickstarter project for an all-singing, all-dancing tour plus album plus art book plus videos extravaganza is heading for the $1,000,000 mark, explains where all the money is likely to go, and how much she'll make, and what she sees as the future of things. It's a really good look at the economics of a "deluxe" self-funded entertainment product. One thing I think she's missing from this is the extent to which all this stuff is more expensive and time-consuming when you're doing it for the first time, and the likelihood that her next project will be a lot simpler/more streamlined when she's only inventing one or two new things, rather than the whole shebang.
in no fucking case scenario do i get a check for $1,000,000 and laugh my way to the bank, then book a private jet to ibiza where a limo filled with hookers and blow will be waiting to escort me to a slamming nightclub called “la uno percento” where i then spend my time contemplating my handsome nose job in the darkened mirrored bathrooms (probably weeping).
and you know what else? if i wind up truly loaded someday, it means i’ll probably buy an abandoned church somewhere and turn it into a free 24-hour circus brunch bar for everybody. cross your fucking fingers. we’ll all win.
stay tuned.
this is just the beginning.
we’re all investing, dollar by dollar, pledge by pledge.
investing not just in the future of my little record and band, but in an idea whose time has come.
and this is a good thing.
LOVE,
afp
WHERE ALL THIS KICKSTARTER MONEY IS GOING, by amanda fucking palmer
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Tuesday, May 22
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A creative agency called Murmure is kitting out its employees with concrete business cards that come with their own miniature shipping palettes. There's a scene in a William Gibson novel (I could swear it was Idoru, but I can't find it) where a Hollywood studio exec passes out business-cards screened on wafer-thin slices of marble, each in its own velveteen slipcase. These (which come with their own little paper boxes) are a nice second, though not nearly so keen as those fictional bad boys.
Concrete Business Cards
(via Neatorama)
By Xeni Jardin at 9:42 am Tuesday, May 22
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At the PBS Newshour site, an analysis of what today's historic SpaceX launch means for the future of space flight, by veteran space journalist Miles O'Brien.
Space is hard and unforgiving and there is still a lot of challenging work ahead for the SpaceX Dragon team. I would not pop the champagne corks just yet. But this is a moment to savor.
For the first time since Endeavour's wheels stopped on runway 15 at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011, a U.S. built spacecraft is back in Mach 25 motion - on its way to meet up with the International Space Station.
Endeavour landed 42 years and one day after Neil Armstrong first left his footprints on the moon, and the J.D. Salinger of the Apollo astronaut corps has been very vocal in his opposition and skepticism about this new course in space.
But anyone who claims they are interested in the exploration of the Final Frontier must applaud this endeavor (lower case - without the "u"). It has now been more than fifty years since human beings first flew to space and little more than 500 of them have been there. Talk about the ultimate elite club.
It is high time that ended and that will never happen if the government runs its space enterprise the way it has up until now: with cost-plus contracts that provide no incentive for the private sector to think about efficiencies.
Read the rest here.
By Cory Doctorow at 8:43 am Tuesday, May 22
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Here's a worthy petition on the WhiteHouse.Gov site:
Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.
We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.
The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research.
Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.
By Xeni Jardin at 6:57 pm Monday, May 21
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A second launch attempt for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is scheduled for 3:44am EDT, Tuesday May 22. Weather is currently 80% go. Watch it live here. For background, watch Miles O'Brien's PBS NewsHour feature, and SpaceFlightNow's QA with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. SpaceFlightNow will also have live coverage from Mission Control, with streaming video. (Image: SpaceFlightNow)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:21 pm Monday, May 21
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In Wired, Robert McMillan profiles Rockstar, a world-class patent troll based in Canada, which was capitalized to buy up Nortel's "defensive" patent portfolio for billions of dollars and now does nothing but look for companies that make stuff that people like and use, so it can send them legal threats. Rockstar itself has no products, aside from legal threats. Reading this left me with the taste of sick in my mouth, and a sense that the patent system has to be reformed or taken down altogether, before it turns parasitism and lawsuits into the only viable technology business-models.
But Widdowson is a specialist. He’s one of 10 reverse-engineers working full time for a stealthy company funded by some of the biggest names in technology: Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Sony, and Ericsson. Called the Rockstar Consortium, the 32-person outfit has a single-minded mission: It examines successful products, like routers and smartphones, and it tries to find proof that these products infringe on a portfolio of over 4,000 technology patents once owned by one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies.
When a Rockstar engineer uncovers evidence of infringement, the company documents it, contacts the manufacturer, and demands licensing fees for the patents in question. The demand is backed by the implicit threat of a patent lawsuit in federal court. Eight of the company’s staff are lawyers. In the last two months, Rockstar has started negotiations with as many as 100 potential licensees. And with control of a patent portfolio covering core wireless communications technologies such as LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 3G, there is literally no end in sight.
“Pretty much anybody out there is infringing,” says John Veschi, Rockstar’s CEO. “It would be hard for me to envision that there are high-tech companies out there that don’t use some of the patents in our portfolio.”
How Apple and Microsoft Armed 4,000 Patent Warheads
By Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm Monday, May 21
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Here's Neil Gaiman's commencement address to Philadelphia's University of the Arts, who awarded him an honorary doctorate. It's a wonderful talk on being an artist and pursuing a career in the arts.
I'm getting an honorary doctorate in Computer Science from the Open University next month, and I've been boiling my brain to come up with my own speech -- this has really raised the bar.
Gaiman addresses the graduating class
By Cory Doctorow at 10:45 am Monday, May 21
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On Twitter, former Warner Music CTO Ethan Kaplan greets the "surprising" news that file sharing of pre-release albums drives demand with acerbic and admirable sarcasm: "Let me simplify this answer: YES IT LEADS TO MORE SALES. DEMAND = DEMAND W/ $$$$$$ IF PRODUCT GOOD."
Simplified further: MUSIC BUSINESS (RECORDED): your product isn't diamonds mined from a secret mythical land.
And beyond broadband/napster/whatever, what hurt you the most is PEOPLE FIGURED THAT OUT. Cynicism caught up with you.
Ethan's one of the good'uns.
Former Record Label Exec Ethan Kaplan: Duh, Of Course More File Sharing Leads To More Sales
By Cory Doctorow at 9:18 am Monday, May 21
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Zeropaid's Drew Wilson has wrapped up his series examining 20 studies that looked at the impact of filesharing on the sales of entertainment products (previously). He's summed up his conclusions based on the project, comparing the entire corpus to the notorious "Phoenix study" that was used as "evidence" for SOPA:
Claim: One of the claims the Phoenix study that we picked up was that finding a legal framework to stop infringement online has proven to sell politically.
Fact: After our extensive review, we found that, even though there is fierce opposition towards laws such as SOPA and any form of graduated response, the problem isn’t actually political. The problem is that there is no scientific basis for laws such as a “graduated response” or censorship of the Internet. After we examined the studies, there was a general theme that the best approach to dealing with file-sharing was not legal enforcement, but rather, a change in a business model that’s adapted to today’s digital reality. If you wanted to find debate where there was no real consensus, then it’s exactly how the industry is suppose to adapt their business model to the digital environment. While many pointed to price point, some suggested trying to find other ways of selling music like what iTunes has done. In fact, one study suggested that enforcement does not bring back customers by itself, but rather, building a model that is actually palatable so the customers return to you more voluntarily. Even the most pro-enforcement study we came up with said that if you’re going to actually do something like litigation, build a better business model as well, but simply resorting to legal tactics against file-sharers is not necessarily a good idea.
Claim: Another claim the Phoenix study made was that (in the process of disagreeing that there is a difference between a physical stolen piece of property and an unauthorized download) there is no incentive for producers and artists to make music. In addition, because of the activities of file-sharing, there will be less creative works made available.
Fact:
Let’s cut to the chase. Part 8 of our series explicitly debunked the claim that file-sharing causes the decrease in quantity of music. The authors of that study explicitly state that they found no evidence of any kind that linked any decline in the quantity of music and file-sharing. If there was any decline that happened during the existence of file-sharing, the decline was merely a continuing trend since before Napster.
In addition, numerous studies point to the trend of an increase in profits for artists both before this series and during this series thanks to the sampling effect. In fact, the only evidence that file-sharing is even hurting artists at all points out that it’s only the super rich and super famous top acts in the entire industry that may suffer any sort of loss at all (as seen in part 19 of our series). Again, as far as our series and the previous studies are concerned, not true at all.
Claim:
File-sharing displaces legitimate sales. The evidence points to that.
Fact:
This is a classic case of error by omission. What we found in our investigation was that there are numerous reasons why music sales were in decline in the early 2000′s other than the existence of file-sharing. Explanations included an increase in other entertainment sectors, the unbundling of the music album and returning to the singles model (re: the comments of deadweight losses) and an increasing pressure of the consumers bottom line in the face of todays economic realities. So, judging by the evidence we’ve collected, the evidence does not point in the direction that file-sharing, in and of itself, displace sales, but rather, other factors would also play a role in displacement of sales.
Claim:
Since people can enjoy music that they downloaded, they are taking away from society and therefore placing a tax on society which means file-sharing must be stopped.
Fact:
This model, when compared to all of the models we’ve seen, is completely out to lunch. There’s been plenty of calculations and economic models and non of them say anything like this. The closest we can recall in our series was Part 5 in our series which used the flawed theory of 1 download means one lost sale. While the models suggest that consumers do get something out of downloaded material, the losses still only account for less than $2 per album.
There's lots more, and it's all worth reading. A great companion piece to TechDirt's The Sky is Rising.
What Filesharing Studies Really Say – Conclusions and Links
By Cory Doctorow at 5:59 am Saturday, May 19
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The Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning has posted an hour-long investigative journalism piece establishing the link between the giant Swedish telcoms company Teliasonera and oppressive regimes around the world. Teliasonera sold and supported network equipment that was used to spy on dissidents, journalists, political reformers, union leaders, and the general public in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Here's EFF's writeup of the piece:
The investigative report, titled “Black Boxes,” in reference to the black boxes Teliasonera allowed police and security services to install in their operation centers--which granted them the unrestricted capability to monitor all communications—including Internet traffic, phone calls, location data from cell phones, and text messages—in real-time. This has caused concern among Swedish citizens and Teliasonera shareholders, who had previously been assuaged by assurances from the telecommunications company that they follow the law in the countries in which they are operating. After a meeting with Peter Norman, Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets, the chairman of Teliasonera’s board of directors issued a statement, announcing that they had launched “an action programme for handling issues related to protection of privacy and freedom of expression in non-democratic countries, in a better and more transparent way.”
Teliasonera’s declaration of good intentions may be too little too late after the damning evidence of abuse compiled by Uppdrag Granskning. Documents obtained by their investigators showed an Azerbaijani had his phone tapped after he published a piece about being beaten at the hands of government security agents while covering a story. The report also found that black-box surveillance was used in Belarus to track down, arrest, and prosecute protesters who attended an anti-government protest rally following the 2010 Belarusian presidential election. One Azerbaijani citizen says he was interrogated solely due to the fact that he voted for the Armenian representative in the 2009 Eurovision song contest.
Swedish Telcom Giant Teliasonera Caught Helping Authoritarian Regimes Spy on Their Citizens
