Boing Boing » Copyfight

Independent Brewers United says they own sixes and nines

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:00:26 +0000

Magic Hat IP, LLC and Independent Brewers United Corporation filed a remarkably spurious trademark lawsuit against West Sixth Brewery in Lexington, KY. Ben sez:

The suit alleges that West Sixth's own logo, which is a "6" within a circle, infringes upon its trademarked "#9" mark and is "directing Defendant West Sixth to account for and to pay over to Magic Hat all profits realized by West Sixth as a result of its use of the 6 Marks, its infringement of MagicHat's trademarks and trade dress, and its acts of unfair competition" as part of the awards it seeks from this suit.
Magic Hat is owned by North American Breweries, a large, multinational corporation that produces and imports several different brands of beer. West Sixth, on the other hand, is a local startup started about a year ago that strives to give back to its own community through financial donations, environmental stewardship, and community activities, many of which are free for attendees.

Brewer Magic Hat files federal lawsuit against West Sixth Brewing

Steampunk magazine #9

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:41:08 +0000

Margaret Killjoy sez, "Steampunk Magazine #9 is out and available for order. The pdf is up as well. New orders and pre-orders will be going out this weekend! 118 ad-free, Creative-Commons pages of steampunk mad science, lifestyle, fiction, and history. Including an interview with Cory Doctorow and how to make hydrogen airships out of condoms."

SteamPunk Magazine 9 (Thanks, Margaret!)

Boba Fett mixer

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 22 May 2013 02:15:29 +0000

DeviantArt's TommyFilth modded a KitchenAid mixer and gave it a perfect Boba Fett makeover: "I asked for a Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas, I pointed my wife toward a broken one on eBay so that I could refurbish it, as I was taking it apart I got some inspiration for the paint job and this is what came out of it, still needs a phase board for speed control and two decals to be applied to the sides but I couldn't wait to share."

Boba Fett Mixer (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Movie studios send fraudulent censorship demands over Pirate Bay documentary

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 May 2013 18:43:16 +0000

You'll remember last month's news that Fox had sent fraudulent takedown notices regarding my novel Homeland. This is hardly an isolated incident: the studios routinely exhibit depraved indifference to the inaccuracies in their automated censorship threats to search engines and webhosts.

This is especially troubling when the studios' notices catch media made specifically to criticize them and their legal strategies. When that happens, they haven't caught a few dolphins in the tuna net -- they've caught some rival activists in the net, activists who're trying to get them to take more care with their dragnet techniques.

A case in point: TPB:AFK a brilliantly made documentary about the MPAA-directed attacks on The Pirate Bay's servers in Sweden, funded through a highly successful Kickstarter. The documentary is Creative Commons licensed and can be freely distributed across the Internet, but Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate have been sending takedown notices to services all over the Internet -- notices in which they aver, on penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith basis for asserting that they represent the people who made "TPB:AFK."

Which they don't.

Over the past weeks several movie studios have been trying to suppress the availability of TPB-AFK by asking Google to remove links to the documentary from its search engine. The links are carefully hidden in standard DMCA takedown notices for popular movies and TV-shows.
The silent attacks come from multiple Hollywood sources including Viacom, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate and are being sent out by multiple anti-piracy outfits.
Fox, with help from six-strikes monitoring company Dtecnet, asked Google to remove a link to TPB-AFK on Mechodownload. Paramount did the same with a link on the Warez.ag forums.

Hollywood Studios Censor Pirate Bay Documentary [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

Cory's Sense About Science lecture

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:20:01 +0000

I gave the annual Sense About Science lecture last week in London, and The Guardian recorded and podcasted it (MP3). It's based on the Waffle Iron Connected to a Fax Machine talk I gave at Re:publica in Berlin the week before.

What the Mounties pirate

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:03:44 +0000

Travis sez, "The Pirate Party of Canada has uncovered that IP addresses from within the RCMP and Industry Canada are used to download copyrighted material. The point here isn't that they are downloading, it's that because all we have are IP addresses we don't know who is actually doing the downloading."

Associated Press quietly nukes its dumber-than-dumb DRM-for-news system

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 18 May 2013 19:00:28 +0000

Do you remember the Associated Press's 2009 announcement that they had discovered a magic-beans technology that would let them stop people from quoting the news unless they paid for license fees (for quotes as short as 12 words, yet!)?

Didn't work.

Since the launch... we heard absolutely nothing about NewsRight. There was a launch, with its newspaper backers claiming it was some huge moment for newspapers, and then nothing.
Well, until now, when we find out that NewsRight quietly shut down. Apparently, among its many problems, many of the big name news organization that owned NewsRight wouldn't even include their own works as part of the "license" because they feared cannibalizing revenue from other sources. So, take legacy companies that are backwards looking, combine it with a licensing scheme based on no legal right, a lack of any actual added value and (finally) mix in players who are scared of cannibalizing some cash cow... and it adds up to an easy failure.

AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down [Mike Masnick/Techdirt]

(Image: AP: Protect, Point, Pay)

Haunted Mansion wallpaper and fabric

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:19:50 +0000

Kristen sez, "The DoomBuggies website has released a version of the Haunted Mansion Corridor of Doors wallpaper in fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap, and according to the DoomBuggies facebook page, it's the same graphic that has been used by Disney. 'This is created from the same artwork that we created for Disney's official Haunted Mansion 40th Anniversary CD box set and CD insert,' according to Jeff Baham, the owner of DoomBuggies.com."

DoomBuggies Eye Fabric

Company that oversees US "six-strikes" copyright shakedown has its company status revoked

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:44:22 +0000

The Center for Copyright Information -- a company established by the RIAA, MPAA and various ISPs -- to oversee the American six-strikes copyright enforcement status has had its company status revoked and faces fines and other penalties. It appears that they forgot to file their government paperwork and pay their fees; they promise that they'll be back online once it's sorted out.

The revocation means that CCI’s articles of organization are void, most likely because the company forgot to file the proper paperwork or pay its fees.
“If entity’s status is revoked then articles of incorporation / organization shall be void and all powers conferred upon such entity are declared inoperative, and, in the case of a foreign entity, the certificate of foreign registration shall be revoked and all powers conferred hereunder shall be inoperative,” the DCRA explains.
Unfortunately for the CCI, the DCRA doesn’t have a strike based system and the company is now facing civil penalties and fines.
It appears that company status was revoked last year which means that other businesses now have the option to take over the name. That would be quite an embarrassment, to say the least, and also presents an opportunity to scammers.
“When a Washington DC corporation is revoked by the DCRA, its name is reserved and protected until December 31st of the year the corporation is revoked. After December 31st, other business entities may use the corporations name,” the DCRA explains on its website.

“Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Outfit Loses Company Status, Faces Penalties [Ernesto/TorrentFreak]

(Thanks, That Anonymous Coward)

Hacking Politics: name-your-price ebook on the history of the SOPA fight

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:37:09 +0000

Hacking Politics is a new book recounting the history of the fight against SOPA, when geeks, hackers and activists turned Washington politics upside-down and changed how Congress thinks about the Internet. It collects essays by many people (including me): Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Nicole Powers, Tiffiny Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, and many others. It's a name-your-price ebook download.

Hacking Politics is a firsthand account of how a ragtag band of activists and technologists overcame a $90 million lobbying machine to defeat the most serious threat to Internet freedom in memory. The book is a revealing look at how Washington works today – and how citizens successfully fought back.
Written by the core Internet figures – video gamers, Tea Partiers, tech titans, lefty activists and ordinary Americans among them – who defeated a pair of special interest bills called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) and PIPA (“Protect IP Act”), Hacking Politics provides the first detailed account of the glorious, grand chaos that led to the demise of that legislation and helped foster an Internet-based network of amateur activists.

Hacking Politics

EFF beats the Trans Pacific Partnership to Peru, sounds the alarm about upcoming brutal, secret copyright treaty meeting

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:00:44 +0000

Danny O'Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez,

The latest round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership starts today in Lima, Peru. Embedded in the trade agreement is an IP chapter that, according to leaks, exports the worst of US copyright law -- DRM blocks, extended copyright terms, ISPs as copyright cops -- without even of the judicial and constitutional counterbalances that US activists have fought so hard for.
In such a giant trade agreement, the Internet issues have sometime risked getting ignored by the mainstream press, and missed by the techies who'd be most affected.
But EFF's international rights director, Katitza Rodriguez, is Peruvian. She's spent the the last month working out of Lima's Escuelab hackerspace, talking to hackers, makers, journalists and artists about the dangers of IP chapter. The result has been petitions, memes, and videos, as well as meetings with politicians and articles in the Peruvian press.

We Beat Them to Lima: Opening a New Front Against Secret IP Treaties (Thanks, Danny!)

Public Knowledge seeks an artist-in-residence

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:54:00 +0000

Michael sez, "Public Knowledge works to promote great technology like 3D printing and open source hardware, while advocating on behalf of the public on important issues like net neutrality and copyright reform. Now we are looking for someone to use all of that technology to help people understand our important issues."

Law profs and librarians to Congress: government edicts should not be restricted by copyright

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:01:18 +0000

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "105 law professors and law librarians have endorsed a call to change U.S. Copyright law to exclude edicts of government. Edicts are "the law" and include all pronouncements of government that are binding on citizens and residents, including statutes, regulations, court opinions, and legally-mandated codes. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then we must all be able to read, know, and speak the law without restraint. The text of the proposed amendment reads:"

“Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of public policy. This applies to such works whether they are Federal, State, or local as well as to those of foreign governments.”

The Edicts of Government Amendment (Thanks, Carl!)

1983's wonderful "Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners"

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:09:44 +0000

Usborne's 1983 classic Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners is an astounding book, written, designed and illustrated by Naomi Reed, Graham Round and Lynne Norman. It uses beautiful infographics and clear writing to provide an introduction to 6502 and Z80 assembler, and it's no wonder that used copies go for as much as $600. I was reminded of it this morning when @amanicdroid tweeted me with a link to a PDF of the book's interior. I'd love to see this book updated for modern computers and reprinted.

@doctorow Have you read "Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners"(1983)? gomsx.net/hansotten/msxd…Illustrations excellent, ages 10(?)-up
— Dr. Chronobiologist (@amanicdroid) May 16, 2013

Katamari Adventure Time

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:37 +0000

What better subject for a t-shirt than an Adventure Time/Katamari Damacy mashup?

Adventure Time Ball

Ne plus ultra of retrogamer wedding cakes

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:07:57 +0000

This amazing retro-gamer wedding cake was made by Wedding Cakes By Nicole of Bunbury, Australia. The cake pays homage to many of the arcade greats:

I created a 3 tier square cake, with each of the sides representing a popular retro platform game. Topped off with a game off Pong, with the score depicting Stephen's "30" years. The board had a joystick, buttons and coin slot. Pacman (my favourite), Donkey Kong, Frogger & Tetris

Dimity asked me to create a cake for her Fiance, Stephen, who loves "old school" computer games. (via Geeks are Sexy)

Canadian anti-piracy bounty hunters ripped off photos for their website

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:42:09 +0000

Canipre, a Canadian company that helps the entertainment industry send legal threats to people alleged to have infringed copyright, has been caught using several infringing images on its website. Included in the art that Canipre appropriated for commercial gain without permission is a CC-licensed photo that they could have used legally simply by crediting the photographer. Canipre blames its web developer.

I ended up getting a flurry of phone calls and e-mails from a guy named Barry Logan.
Logan claimed that the company used a 3rd party vendor to develop their website and that the vendor had purchased the image from an image bank.
I pointed out to Logan that if that was true, he had basically paid his vendor to rip off other people's creative work. Logan told me that he would contact his web provider and have the image removed. He also told me that he would provide me with the name of the website developer and the name of the image bank where they obtained my photo.
I did notice that they took down my photo, but I have not heard back from Logan regarding the name of the developer and where they sourced my image. I plan to contact Logan later today if he doesn't get back to me. [sic]

The best part is that the company claims it is motivated by a higher calling than mere profit: "[We want to] change social attitudes toward downloading. Many people know it is illegal but they continue to do it... Our collective goal is not to sue everybody… but to change the sense of entitlement that people have, regarding Internet-based theft of property."

The Company Helping Movie Studios Sue You for Illegal Downloading Has Been Using Images Without Permission [Vice/Jamie Lee Curtis]

One reason you can't take photos in the art museum

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 14 May 2013 19:14:53 +0000

Many art museums don't hold the copyrights for the paintings and other artworks they own. So, while protecting the art from damage by exposure to 50 bazillion flashes is part of the motivation for banning museum photography, this is also a copyfight issue — and museums are starting to side with the phone-camera-toting public.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield performs David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on the ISS

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 12 May 2013 14:38:34 +0000

Astronaut Chris Hadfield -- the tweeting, tumbling Canadian astronaut who's a one-dude astro-ambassador from the space programme to the Internet -- has produced and released a video of his own performance of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" (AKA the "Major Tom song") on the ISS. He adapts the lyrics a bit to his own situation -- and changes out the whole dying-in-space chorous -- but is otherwise pretty faithful. From the credits, it appears that David Bowie gave permission for this, though that's not entirely clear. I would think that not even a major record label would be hamfisted and cack-handed enough to send a takedown notice over this one (it's been suggested for Boing Boing more than any other link in my memory), but I'm prepared to be surprised.

Space Oddity

What makes a project remixable?

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 11 May 2013 01:00:21 +0000

In The remixing dilemma: The trade-off between generativity and originality [PDF], a paper just published in American Behavioral Scientist, Benjamin Mako Hill and Andrés Monroy-Hernández analyzed a data-set of projects from the Scratch website that had been made available for download and remixing. They were attempting to identify the formalattributes that made some projects more likely to attract remixers. As Mako describes in this summary, they found that the projects that were most remixed were neither overly complex (too intimidating) and finished, nor overly vague and undefined (too uninspiring). The Scratch dataset was a good one to study here, because it includes the number of times each project was viewed as well as the number of remixes it inspired, allowing the authors to calculate the probability that a project will inspire a remix while controlling for its overall popularity:

To test our theory that there is a trade-off between generativity and originality, we build a dataset that includes every Scratch remix and its antecedent. For each pair, we construct a measure of originality by comparing the remix to its antecedent and computing an “edit distance” (a concept we borrow from software engineering) to determine how much the projects differ.
We find strong evidence of a trade-off: (1) Projects of moderate complexity are remixed more lightly than more complicated projects. (2) Projects by more prominent creators tend to be remixed in less transformative ways. (3) Cumulative remixing tends to be associated with shallower and less transformative derivatives. That said, our support for (1) is qualified in that we do not find evidence of the increased originality for the simplest projects as our theory predicted.
We feel that our results raise difficult but important challenges, especially for the designers of social media systems. For example, many social media sites track and display user prominence with leaderboards or lists of aggregate views. This technique may lead to increased generativity by emphasizing and highlighting creator prominence. That said, it may also lead to a decrease in originality of the remixes elicited. Our results regarding the relationship of complexity to generativity and originality of remixes suggest that supporting increased complexity, at least for most projects, may have fewer drawbacks.

The Remixing Dilemma: The Trade-off Between Generativity and Originality

Porno copyright troll to Georgia judge: "Ignore California judge! They have gay marriage!"

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:00:27 +0000

When US Federal Judge Otis Wright ruled against Prenda Law (a gang that used sloppy accusations of illegal downloads of pornographic movies to extort millions from people who didn't want the embarrassment of being publicly sued), he ordered Prenda's lawyers to give copies of his ruling to judges in all the other places where they were suing their victims. Judge Wright's ruling called Prenda a "fraud" and said its lawyers engaged in "moral turpitude."

One of Prenda's most colorful lawyers is Jacques Nazaire. He's asked a judge in Georgia to ignore the Judge Wright's order, because Judge Wright is a California judge, and California has gay marriage.

It doesn't stop there. It notes that California courts have different immigration rules and (randomly) that NY has different gun rights. Basically, it throws out every hot button issue that stereotypical conservatives might disagree with stereotypical liberals on.
Of course, all of that is meaningless. While it's true that Judge Wright's ruling is in no way a precedential ruling for the Georgia court, it's still a ruling about federal law, not any specific state law. And the ruling itself is about flat out misconduct (including potential racketeering and tax evasion claims) by the plaintiff in this case, because of actions in a nearly identical case. That's not about California having a "mandate" over Georgia. It's about very relevant additional information that the court should know about.
Nazaire then goes on to list out a ridiculous parade of horribles that he claims would happen if the Georgia court "followed the aforesaid California Order" including that law firms wouldn't be able to use boilerplate text any more. This makes absolutely no sense at all. First of all, the inclusion of Judge Wright's order is not about having the Georgia court "follow" the order, but adding additional important information about the parties in this particular case. Separately, the idea that adding a California ruling into the docket suddenly means lawyers wouldn't be able to cut and paste any more... just doesn't make any sense at all.

Prenda Lawyer Says Judge Wright's Order Is Inapplicable In Georgia Because California Recognizes Gay Marriage [Mike Masnick/TechDirt]

New law will fix the DMCA, make jailbreaking, unlocking and interoperability legal - your help needed!

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:16:40 +0000

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) have introduced a landmark technology bill called The Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 [PDF] that reforms the way our devices our regulated. It fixes a glaring hole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), changing the rules so that you are allowed to remove restrictions and locks from your devices provided that you don't violate other laws (as it stands, removing a lock, even to do something legal, like installing unapproved software on your iPhone or change carriers, is banned by the DMCA). The bill clarifies that security researchers don't violate the law by publishing information about flaws in the devices we trust and depend upon, and makes it legal to break "lock-out codes" that stop mechanics from fixing cars.

This is a watershed moment in 21st century technology law, and it's desperately needed. Every day that goes by sees us more dependent on devices that are increasingly designed to be as opaque as possible -- devices made by companies whose business-model treats customers as adversaries who undermine profits when they turn to third parties for software, repairs and services. It is only the presence of the terrible rules in the DMCA that makes this business attractive -- without these rules, technology locks would be quickly broken in the marketplace and competition -- as well as transparency -- would thrive. If you want to be sure that the devices that fill your rooms, your pockets -- and increasingly, your body -- are well-behaved and trustworthy, please support this bill.

FixTheDMCA.org and a broad coalition of groups are calling on Americans to write to their representatives in support of this bill. Until now, almost all technology activism has been reactive, fighting against bad rules. We finally have the chance to make some good rules, to establish a positive agenda for freedom, trustworthiness and transparency in the devices that form the nervous system of the 21st century.

"The Unlocking Technology Act of 2013" has 3 parts:
- It amends Section 1201 to make it clear that it is completely legal to "circumvent" if there is no copyright infringement.

- It legalizes tools and services that enable circumvention as long as they are intended for non-infringing uses.

- It changes Copyright Law to specify that unlocking cell phones is not copyright infringement.

You can read the full text of the bill here.

Finally, there's a bill in Congress that legalizes cell phone unlocking and fixes the DMCA.

Bake a Mean Spirited Censorship Pie with the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 01:35:26 +0000

EFF is celebrating the new inductees into its Takedown Hall of Shame with a new cooking show! In this episode, EFF staffer Parker Higgins bakes a "Mean Spirited Censorship Pie" -- which is what all have to call the classic Southern dessert formerly known as "Derby Pie," now that Kern's Kitchen in Louisville is threatening to sue anyone who posts a family recipe with that name.

It's sarcastic, carbtastic, and informative -- delicious!

Baking With EFF: (Not) Derby Pie, the Trademarked Treat

Welcome to the century of the copyright troll: Prenda Law was just the beginning

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:20:36 +0000

As the saga of the porno copyright trolls Prenda Law moves into its end-game (likely to involve disbarments and jail time for the fraudsters behind the multimillion-dollar scheme that relied on bogus legal threats and sloppy accusations of copyright infringement), it's worth asking, how, exactly, this scam was able to go on for so long, and what can be done to prevent it in the future.

A pair of articles -- one by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mitch Stoltz, the other by Ars Technica's Nate Anderson -- delve into this in depth.

First, Anderson explains how Prenda hit on a cunning legal strategy that allowed it to try out variations on its scam, looking for the right combination of tactics to extract maximum revenue from its victims, without risking its own finances. This strategy cost the public a fortune in court costs and cost the victims another fortune in their legal costs, but Prenda didn't bear any of that. In effect, the public subsidized its brute-force attack on the American legal system:

How could the scheme go on for so long even as federal judges complained about fraud, as "John Doe" defendants complained repeatedly that they had no idea what the cases were about, and as critics complained about the injustice of the entire business model? The answer is that federal judges aren't generally investigators. Prenda had gone to great lengths to obscure what was really going on, who was doing what, and where the money went. Judges want to clear cases off their dockets and in rare cases will entertain sanctions motions, but to unravel something as complex as Prenda's behavior required a real investigation. Yet without more details, actual criminal investigators had very little to go on; most of the judicial complaints dealt with behavior in court, not public crimes.
So Prenda could essentially turn the entire US judiciary into a laboratory for incrementally refining its porn trolling techniques, testing venues, judges, corporate structures, collection procedures, and legal arguments, looking for perfection. And what it arrived at in the end had a certain devious logic to it. Even Otis Wright, the federal judge in Los Angeles who brought down Prenda's principals and referred them all for criminal and tax prosecution this week, had to concede the conceptual beauty of the system.

But as EFF's Stoltz explains, this isn't a bug in the system, it's a feature. Modern copyright law has been bought, paid for, and designed by the entertainment industry, and they demanded as system with as few safeguards and checks and balances as possible. Every element of copyright law that might enable an innocent person to easily defend herself meant added expense and burden for the entertainment industry's lawsuits against its customers and against technological innovators:

Consider this: U.S. copyright law provides statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work - without the copyright owner having to show actual harm. Individuals have been hit with damages in the six figures, and companies with bankrupting judgments in the tens of millions. Threats of damages like this are one of the main ways that copyright trolls convince their victims to pay $2,000 to $4,000 in "settlements." But statutory damages are also wielded as a club by entertainment, media, software, and technology companies. They can destroy competitors and dry up investment with mere threats of litigation, giving them veto power over new technologies and emerging artists.
And consider "secondary liability," the judge-made rules for when one person can be held responsible for copyright infringement by another. The rules are vague and their application often uncertain. Copyright trolls use this uncertainty to make plausible-sounding threats against Internet subscribers. You may not have been the one who downloaded our movie, say the trolls, but your name is on the cable bill and the law will hold you responsible. It's not always true - in many cases, an ISP subscriber is protected from liability for others' downloading - but the rules are vague and complex enough to make the threat sound real.
Looking beyond trolls, the same vague legal principles create legal nightmares - and sometimes financial ruin - for people that try to play by the rules. Companies like ReplayTV and Veoh went bankrupt trying to convince courts that they shouldn't be held responsible when customers copy TV and movies. Dish Networks/ReplayTV, YouTube, and many less prominent technology companies face lawsuits where the toolmaker must answer for the tool user. Only lawyers benefit, as vagueness means long fights and lots of legal fees.

As Stoltz writes, Prenda is just the beginning. The US copyright system is an attractive nuisance, a moral hazard on steroids, and the entertainment industry's own much-publicized efforts are the tip of the iceberg. Prenda's masterminds weren't all that clever -- there are smarter con artists out there who've learned a lot from Prenda's efforts, and they're licking their chops and getting ready to prey on you and your neighbors. And as with Prenda, we'll all foot the bill for their cons, thanks to Big Content's depraved indifference to the fallout from its legal projects.

Humble Double-Fine Bundle: name your price for an amazing Double Fine games bundle

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 09 May 2013 01:06:21 +0000

The Humble Indie Bundle is back again, with the The Humble Double Fine Bundle: name your price for three DoubleFine games, pay more than the average and get a fourth, pay $35 or more and get backer access to the Broken Age Kickstarter, and at $70, you get a t-shirt, too! It's all DRM-free and cross platform (Win/Lin/Mac); as always, you can earmark some or all of your money to EFF and/or Child's Play, the bundle's two nominated charities.

The Humble Double Fine Bundle (pay what you want and help charity) (via Waxy)

Disney files trademark application for "Dia de Los Muertos"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:23:06 +0000

Disney has filed for trademarks on "Dia de Los Muertos" in a wide variety of goods and services -- candy, snacks, cosmetics, toiletries, perfumes, gadgets, jewelry and jewelry boxes, and more. This would be a good time for people to tell the USPTO that there are innumerable products in those categories that already use the term, and that no exclusive association exists (or should exist) between the Disney company and the traditional Mexican holiday. Not even if the next Pixar movie is called "Dia de Los Muertos." (Thanks, Chryss!)

EFF updates the Takedown Hall of Shame

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 19:20:55 +0000

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published its latest "Takedown Hall of Shame" installment, listing three companies that used baseless and stupid legal threats to censor the Internet. The current crop includes Kern's Kitchen in Louisville, which claims a trademark on the common term "Derby Pie" and threatens bloggers who post their family recipes for the classic desert -- they also target WordPress.com for their threats (one victim changed the name of the recipe to "Mean Spirited Censorship Pie").

Another inductee is Time Warner Cable, who went after a critic who put up a site making fun of the company's terrible customer service, trying to get its YouTube, Twitter and other social media sites taken down.

Finally, there's Fox, which earned a place in the Hall of Shame by sending out fraudulent takedown notices over my bestselling novel Homeland, swearing on pain of perjury that it represented me (it doesn't).

Takedown Hall of Shame Inductions, May 2013

Crowdfunding a CC-licensed translation of classic Yiddish book Poylishe Velder (In The Forests of Poland)

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:08:52 +0000

Eric sez,

Best selling author and native Yiddish speaker Michael Wex has launched an indiegogo campaign to translate what he is calling the most important work of world literature that you've probably never heard of. The book, written by Joseph Opatoshu in 1921 when he was a young Polish immigrant living in New York City is an historical novel about 19th century Jewish Eastern Europe:
A vast panorama of Jewish life in Poland during the 1850s, Opatoshu's novel concentrates on backwoods Jews who live among gentile peasants rather than in Jewish communities in cities or shtetlekh. Touching as it does on hasidism, heresy, pre-Christian Polish folk customs, wife-swapping, messianism, and Polish nationalism, this book will change the way you think about Jewish life in Poland.
When he completes the work in about a year the translated novel will be released under a Creative Commons license. Wex hopes that a new translation will bring Opatoshu's 1921 novel to a broader audience. "It'll change everybody's views of Jewish life in Poland,' Wex writes. 'If this campaign works, it'll also help other translators find a way to fund their own projects and establish a whole library of world literature that hasn't been translated into English before or has never been translated properly. Raising the money in advance means that the translators can work full time; since the finished product doesn't cost anything, they don't have to worry about a book's commercial potential. It's like a grassroots Guggenheim."

Wex wrote the wonderful book Born to Kvetch, which I reviewed in 2009.

New Authorized Translation of a Classic Yiddish Novel into English

Prenda law judge says porno copyright trolls are frauds, identity thieves; $80K in fines and disbarment pending

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:02:29 +0000

Judge Wright has issued his long-awaited ruling in the case of Prenda Law, the notorious porno copyright trolls who used fraud and bullying to extort millions from Internet users by threatening to sue them for downloading pornography videos with embarrassing titles. Prenda used a combination of offshore shell companies, obfuscation, and even identity theft to disguise the ownership of their con, and when they landed before Judge Wright, it all started to unravel.

The judge has fined Prenda $80,000 ($40K in fees, doubled for punitive measure) and asked the FBI to investigate them for racketeering. He held that their operation was a fraud, that they had committed identity theft, and, importantly, identified Steele, Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy as the "de facto owners" of Prenda. He's asked the lawyers' bar associations to have them disbarred. And he made a lot of Star Trek references!

Nevertheless, it is clear that the Principals’ enterprise relies on deception. Part of that ploy requires cooperation from the courts, which could only be achieved through deception. In other words, if the Principals assigned the copyright to themselves, brought suit in their own names, and disclosed that they had the sole financial interest in the suit, a court would scrutinize their conduct from the outset. But by being less than forthcoming, they defrauded the Court. They anticipated that the Court would blindly approve their early-discovery requests, thereby opening the door to more settlement proceeds.
As for penalties, they begin with attorneys' fees. Prenda will have to pay these to the two defense lawyers who have been instrumental in this case: Morgan Pietz and Nicholas Ranallo. Wright awards $36,150 in fees to Pietz, $1,950 in fees to Ranallo, as well as legal costs (copying and filing fees, for example) to both. He then doubles the amount "as a punitive measure," arriving at $81,319.72. In a footnote, Wright says that the sum "is calculated to be just below the cost of an effective appeal"—a final dig at the Prenda business model of settlement offers just below the cost of defense. The Prenda folks have 14 days to pay up.
The harshest penalties are saved for last. First, Judge Wright suggests the Prenda lawyers should be disbarred, writing "there is little doubt that Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, [and] Gibbs suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." In many states, including California, crimes reaching the standard of "moral turpitude" lead to automatic disbarment. Wright will be referring the four lawyers to every state bar in which they are admitted to practice...
Third, though Plaintiffs boldly probe the outskirts of law, the only enterprise they resemble is RICO. The federal agency eleven decks up is familiar with their prime directive and will gladly refit them for their next voyage. The Court will refer this matter to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. The [court] will also refer this matter to the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and will notify all judges before whom these attorneys have pending cases.

Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators [Joe Mullin/Ars Technica]

Free/CC kids' picture book: The Story of a Piece of Paper

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:41:01 +0000

Natalie Jubb comes out to many of my events in Toronto with her charming kids, and while I knew she was an artist (mostly lovely mosaics), I hadn't had a chance to get a good look at her work until today, when she tweeted a link to "The Story of a Piece of Paper," a board-book she wrote and drew with the help of her daughter Katya. Natalie and Katya have released their book as a CC-licensed PDF (it's a picture book, so they needed to control the layouts pretty closely). It's a fabulous read, and has my favorite kids' book origin story: the bedtime-story-become-a-book.

The Story of A Piece of Paper was commissioned by my older daughter Katya one bedtime when she was four. “Can you tell me a new story?” she said. “Make one up yourself. What about? Oh, just a piece of paper.”
So I made up this story with the girls’ help, and they were quite pleased with it. So pleased that they kept requesting that same story again and again. I personally didn’t think the story was all that great. But clearly I have a poor grasp on what literature appeals to children.
For the girls’ birthdays this year, I decided to illustrate their story and make it into a book. I thought that it would make a memorable birthday present and also that seeing characters from their imagination on a pages of a real book will encourage my kids to keep inventing stories and creating things.

The Story of a Piece of Paper