From Larry Lessig’s blog…

Google has been sued by the Authors Guild, and a number of individual authors. This follows similar threats hinted at by the American Association of Publishers. The authors and the publishers consider Google’s latest fantastic idea, Google Print — a project to Google-ize 20,000,000 books — to be “massive copyright infringement.” They have asked a federal court to shut Google Print down.

It is 1976 all over again. Then, like now, content owners turned to the courts to stop an extraordinary new technology. Then, like now, copyright is the weapon of choice. But then, like now, the content owners of course don’t really want the court to stop the new technology. Then, like now, they simply want to be paid for the innovations of someone else. Then, like now, the content owners ought to lose.

More… Ed Felten chips in.

Useful Reading List for anyone starting out.

An often-overlooked downside of DRM. This from a column by Oren Sreebny of the University of Washington:

It’s very important to universities that the recorded record of human history remain accessible to students, teachers, and researchers – and remain accessible for the long run. Who’s willing to bet that we’ll have the tools to read files encoded with Windows Plays For Sure (speaking of irony) a hundred years from now? Chances are good we’ll still be able to play mp3 files then. The industry’s current drive to lock that content away in proprietary formats is a pressing matter of concern to all of us. We are very interested in new distributors (like Audio Lunchbox and Mindawn) that are using open formats such as ogg vorbis and flac as well as mp3.

Update: Thoughtful email from Bill Thompson, pointing out that I missed

one important point, which is that none of the proprietary schemes are in fact very good, and that’s why they have to be protected by laws like the DMCA/EU Copyright Directive. I doubt that archivists in a hundred years will respect (or even be aware of) these laws just as we disregard the laws which would stop us plundering ancient burial grounds or reprinting sacred texts. So unless someone comes up with an unbreakable DRM scheme we should be ok – just as long as we have enough hackers working in the area :-)

The Supreme Court tried to steer a middle path between these claims [of the content and technology industries], and did a reasonable job. But the outcome of the case is nevertheless unsatisfactory. That’s not the court’s fault. It was struggling to apply a copyright law which has grown worse than anachronistic in the digital age. That’s something Congress needs to remedy.

In America, the length of copyright protection has increased enormously over the past century, from around 28 years to as much as 95 years. The same trend can be seen in other countries. In June Britain signalled that it may extend its copyright term from 50 years to around 90 years.

This makes no sense. Copyright was originally intended to encourage publication by granting publishers a temporary monopoly on works so they could earn a return on their investment. But the internet and new digital technologies have made the publication and distribution of works much easier and cheaper. Publishers should therefore need fewer, not more, property rights to protect their investment. Technology has tipped the balance in favour of the public domain.

A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms—14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Full text here.

Interesting (and very clear) comments on the Supreme Court decision by Richard Posner and Gary Becker in their joint Blog. Thanks to Hap for the tip.

This morning’s Observer column mulling over the Grokster decision. Conclusion:

Thus we have a strangely paradoxical outcome. The movie studios and record companies have apparently won a famous legal victory in their war against file-sharing. But the main consequence of this victory will be to drive file-sharers to use P2P software that is not only much more powerful than anything Grokster and StreamCast could contrive, but also looks immune to legal challenges. If this is victory, can you imagine what defeat would be like?

The US Supreme Court has ruled against Streamcast et al. I’ve just downloaded the Judgment for a closer look. At first sight, it seems to hinge on intent — i.e. whether a technology was created with an intent to copy or distribute protected material. If that’s what the Judgment really says, then the decision needn’t have the chilling effect on innovation that so many of us feared. But these are deep waters, Holmes, and I’m submerged just now.

Can you imagine the discussion-fest there will be on Blogs tonight? I want to know first what Ed Felten and Larry Lessig think. Neither has said anything substantive yet (17:30 UK time). It will be a long night.

Update: Interesting discussion going on at SCOTUSblog.

Terrific piece by Victor Keegan in the Guardian. Sample:

It is enough to make a sceptic believe in life after death. For the past few years the music industry has been predicting the death of the singles market because of the global scourge of illegal downloading.

And what has happened? The latest figures show that 524,000 singles were sold last week in the UK, an impressive 7% increase on a year ago and no less that 44% up on sales earlier in the year, when the sirens of doom were at their loudest.

Oh, I’ve forgotten a small point. These figures only refer to sales of what is known in the trade as “physical” singles. If (legal) downloads are included, sales have soared by a staggering 88% in the last year to 977,000 last week.

As a Guardian leader pointed out yesterday, far from killing the industry, downloads have given it a new lease of life. Meanwhile what has the industry been doing? Instead of opening the champagne corks they have stepped up their campaign to rid the industry of the virus they still claim is killing it.

According to the Daily Mail, investigators have tracked down the parents of children who were illegally downloading from the web or making available their own tracks for others. The parents paid £2,500 in compensation to the industry rather than face fines in court and possibly heavy legal costs.

This is a worrying development when a record company acts as prosecution, jury and judge in a matter where it has a strong vested interest. Could anyone seriously suggest that this booming industry has lost £2,500 in sales (the cost of over 2,500 downloaded singles) as a result of action by these teenagers?

From yesterday’s Financial Times…

Plans to issue new European Union rules on patents for the software industry have hit a fresh obstacle, with a European parliament report urging changes to the law that would make it more difficult for many high-technology companies to register patents for their inventions.