Category Archives: Intellectual Property

Mandy’s Dangerous Downloaders Act

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This morning’s Observer column.

The trouble is that in Westminster (or on Capitol Hill) nobody speaks for the future or for the wider needs of society. So we wind up with biased legislation framed in a rearview mirror. The fact that the internet makes it easy to copy and remix does indeed pose a challenge for IP regimes framed in the era of print. But that should be a spur for rethinking the regime, not for switching off the net – because that’s what we will have to do in order to stop what’s now going on.

The dangerous downloaders act won’t stop file-sharing, but it will certainly inhibit online creativity. This government has legislated in haste; it will be for the next one to repent at leisure.

Libraries and the digital record

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Jonathan Zittrain from the Berkman Center at Harvard gave this riveting lecture at Duke University on March 3. It’s quite long — an hour and a quarter — so you need to allocate some serious time to it, but IMHO it’s worth it. It starts slowly as he lays out an analytical framework that, at first sight, seems to have little to do with libraries, but about 27 minutes in to the presentation he really hits his stride. For anyone interested in the cultural responsibilities of libraries in a digital era, this is eye-opening stuff becasue it gives some concrete examples of cases where libraries will need to assume really serious responsibilities as curators of the digital record, not just in terms of preservation, but also in defence of historical accuracy.

At last: the iPhone Developer License Agreement Revealed (courtesy of Freedom of Information Act)

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From Slashdot.

The EFF is publicly disclosing a version of Apple’s iPhone developer program license agreement. The highlights: you can’t disclose the agreement itself (the EFF managed to get it via the Freedom of Information Act thanks to NASA’s recent app), Apple reserves the right to kill your app at any time with no reason, and Apple’s liability in any circumstance is limited to 50 bucks. There’s also this gem: “You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise create any Application or other program that would disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod Touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so.” The entire agreement (PDF) is up at the EFF’s site."

The Magnum Archive Sale

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Fascinating account of the background to Magnum’s sale of its press prints archive to Michael Dell.

Last week, one of the most important photojournalism archives in history, the Magnum Photo Agency’s press prints collection, was sold to Michael Dell of Dell computers. Specifically, to Dell’s private investment firm, MSD Capital LP.

The collection will be housed by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

“Right place, right time, right people.” That’s how Eli Reed, Magnum photographer and photojournalism professor at the school, summed up the deal. “It was a long time coming; it didn’t just happen quickly,” he said.

Impressively keeping with Magnum’s cooperative policies, the deal ensures the photographers still retain total ownership of their works. Only the prints used by Magnum through 2003 for publication were sold, not the rights to the images themselves.

Though the price remains undisclosed, the collection of photographs had been insured for a value of $100 million. Industry insider Paul Melcher speculated the price at around $30 million.

The press prints collection comprises of over 185,000 images by over 100 renowned photographers, including seminal talent such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Elliott Erwitt, Ernst Haas and Eve Arnold. Magnum was established in 1947 to wrest control from publishers back into the hands of the photographers by allowing shooters to keep the rights to their images. In so doing, Magnum pioneered a new business model for photojournalism.

This also explains why the putative deals with Corbis and Getty never went through. The Magnum photographers wanted to retain the rights. Now they appear to have got what they wanted: retention of rights, plus $30 million to invest in their upcoming online service. Neat.

Also: nice to know that the University of Texas will scan both front and back of each print. Those office scribbles can sometimes be interesting. For example,

Apple goes after Android

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Rather than take on Google directly, Apple has sued HTC, the manufacturer which makes most of the handsets currently running the Android operating system. But to the detached observer, it’s clear what the real target is. Here’s GMSV’s take on it:

Although not named in Apple’s suits accusing HTC of multiple violations of iPhone-related patents, Google made a point Tuesday of publicly declaring its support for the company that makes many of the most popular Android-based smartphones, including the Google-branded Nexus One. “We are not a party to this lawsuit,” a spokesman told TechCrunch. “However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.” Unless Google can come up with a reason to turn loose its own legal hounds in a counterattack against Apple, however, that support, whatever form it takes, will be coming from the sidelines. In an effort clearly aimed at halting the Android advance, Apple avoided tangling with the search sovereign mano a mano and instead hit the HTC flank, opening the possibility of winning a U.S. International Trade Commission injunction sealing the border against any HTC phones found to be infringing.

Judging by HTC’s latest statement regarding the action, it may already have gotten some advice from Google on framing its position in the court of public opinion. In advising stockholders that it doesn’t expect the Apple suits to have any short-term material impact or affect Q1 guidance, HTC flew the freedom-of-choice banner, saying, “HTC believes that consumer choice is a key component to success in the smartphone industry and this is best achieved through multiple suppliers providing a variety of mobile experiences. HTC has focused on offering its customers a uniquely-HTC experience through HTC Sense and its broad portfolio of smartphones.”

Where things go from here is anyone’s guess — ITC action, countersuits and amended complaints, out of court settlement, royalties, IP sharing, full review of the patents themselves. But as a first-strike FUD missile, Apple’s litigation seems to be doing its job right now.

What it suggests to me is that Android is beginning to bite, in the sense that Apple thinks it may turn out to pose a strategic threat to the iPhone/iPad market.

DeadHead memories

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My Observer column on Sunday about the perceptiveness of the Grateful Dead has triggered fond memories in some readers — and stimulated some lovely emails, including this one from a colleague:

In 1972 I was one of the organisers of a big music festival in a place called Bickershaw near Wigan. The Dead were top of the bill and during contract negotiations with them, we were amazed that we had to provide a central area to accommodate anyone who wanted to record their gig. They had realised as early as 1972 that they could give away poor quality recordings, knowing that many would then go out and buy the real thing. I believe they were the largest earners amongst R&R bands for many years. I hung out with Jerry Gracia for a bit and he was very stoned but also very smart.

An interesting footnote – the main festival organiser was one Jeremy Beadle. He wasn’t famous yet but had already started to assume his annoying persona. I think he was the only person at the festival who wasn’t stoned, but he was also very smart and went on to make made lots of money.

There’s a web site for the aforementioned festival too. Gosh! Those were the days.

So is the H.264 problem going to be solved?

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Interesting report in The Register about Google’s acquisition of On2, the company that developed the VP3 codec which is the basis for Ogg Theora.

The question is still whether Google will turn around and open source On2’s video codecs. In announcing the original pact, Mountain View made a point of saying that it believes “high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform” — and that On2 is a means of reaching that end.

The major web browser makers – including Google, Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft – have failed to agree on a single common codec for the new HTML5 video tag. The HTML5 spec allows for any codec, and while some have opted for the open and license-free Ogg Theora, others are sticking to the license-encumbered H.264 for reasons of performance, hardware support, and alleged patent anxiety.

If you’re new to this, Charles Arthur wrote a helpful piece about it, following on a perceptive piece by Jack Schofield.

IPREDator launches. Howzat, Mandelson?

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Latest front opens in the arms race — Pirate Bay’s Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public | TorrentFreak.

With a beta launch coinciding with the introduction of the controversial IPRED law in Sweden, the service promised to offer users an anonymous connection to the Internet. IPRED gave the copyright holders increased power to track down pirates, and with the launch of IPREDator the creators neutralized this new ‘threat’.

Much like many other comparable VPN services, Ipredator allows users to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. The interest in services like this is booming. In Sweden alone, an estimated 500,000 Internet subscribers are already hiding their identities online, and that number is expected to rapidly grow in the new year.

Microsoft to fund ACAP development?

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The search by newspaper publishers for DRM-for-papers continues. ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) is currently their Great White Hope. This report from TechCrunch suggests that Microsoft might be getting in on the act.

Our sources say Microsoft has pledged to help fund research and engineering into ACAP to the tune of about will put £100,000. This is the more granular version of the robots.txt protocol which has been proposed by publishers to enable them to have a more sophisticated response to search engine crawlers. However, we understand that Microsoft won’t be involved in developing the protocol, just the financial funding.

For years, Google has characterised the debate about search engines as “you are either in our index or not in it, there is no half-way house.” But the Automated Content Access Protocol ”ACAP” proposes a far more layered response, allowing full access or just access to some content of a site. Unsurprisingly, it’s been developed by a consortium of the World Association of Newspapers, European Publishers Council and International Publishers Association. Proposed in 2006, it has been criticised as being biased towards publishers rather than search engines, specifically Google, and few non-ACAP members have adopted the protocol. Some call it the “DRM of newspaper web sites”. That said some 1,600 traditional publishers have signed up to using ACAP.

But if Bing starts to play ball with ACAP, this could change the game. Suddenly newspapers will have a stick, and a heavyweight enforcer in the shape of Bing, with which to beat Google. Google would have a choice – either recognise the ACAP protocol in order to get some level of access to newspaper sites, or just ignore it…

Judge Tells Google to Revise Its Book Pact by Nov. 9

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From today’s NYTimes.

On Wednesday morning, Judge Denny Chin set Nov. 9 as the date by which Google and its partners must submit a revised settlement for the court’s preliminary approval.

The original agreement was negotiated between Google and representatives of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, who had sued the company, claiming copyright infringement, after Google began scanning books from university libraries. After the settlement was announced last October, it faced hundreds of objections from authors, academics, librarians, public interest groups and would-be rivals. Last month, the Justice Department recommended that the court reject the settlement as it stood.

The Justice Department, which submitted a 32-page filing to the court on Sept. 18, said it was concerned the agreement could violate antitrust law by giving Google “de facto exclusive rights for the digital distribution of orphan works.” Orphan works are books whose authors are unknown or cannot be found. The Justice Department also said it wanted the settlement to comply with procedures for class-action lawsuits.