Posts published during February, 2009

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February 10, 2009 — Ben

Copyright Extension in the U.K.

Photo courtesy of andymiah on flickr

Andy Burnham. Photo courtesy of andymiah on flickr.

This story’s a little stale, but still interesting.  A minor uproar happened in the UK a couple of months back when Andy Burnham, the British Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport gave a speech (full text) in which he suggested that the government consider extending Britain’s recorded music copyright term from 50 to 70 years.  The 20-year extension is in line with America’s 1998 Sonny Bono Act, is expressly intended to ensure an artist’s work stays in copyright over the length of their entire life.  Now, this isn’t a legislative proposal, nor is it a campaign; it’s one isolated speech being given by one individual (albeit a highly-placed one).  He gave the speech to the UK Music Creators’ Conference in London, on December 11, 2008.

The story’s a big deal because of his office (Minister of Culture), and because his speech directly contradicts a conclusion reached in the Gowers Review in 2006.  Gordon Brown commissioned the report when he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer, and appointed economist Andrew Gowers in charge.  The Review was fairly conservative; it advocated stronger enforcement, including legislative action and participation in European enforcement initiatives.  But it also was strongly in favor of allowing format-shifting, clearly defining exceptions for parody, educational use, and library/archive use, and took a strong stand against extending copyright.  The conclusion came from copyright’s economic argument; past a certain point, extending copyright law doesn’t do anything to encourage creation of new material.  Dave Rowntree, the drummer for Blur, told the Gowers Review, “I have never heard of a single band deciding not to record a song because it will fall out of copyright in only 50 years. The idea is laughable.”

Again, nobody’s taking Burnham seriously; there hasn’t been much discussion since the initial fracas.  Andrew Gowers himself wrote a rebuttal in the Financial Times, in which he called Burnham “silly and out of touch”.  Which seems to be the general consensus; after getting slammed for his speech, he hasn’t brought up the subject up, instead focusing on protecting kids on the internet.

Duration really is the elephant in the room when it comes to modern copyright law in the US, which is why it’s comforting to see the reception Burnham got in Britain.  As James Boyle and Larry Lessig have stated in their books, a tiny fraction of America’s huge quantities of film and recorded music is in the public domain.  And there’s absolutely not a good reason for it.  As Rowntree said, no artist is going to create more works because of copyright extensions.  Copyright in 1790 was 14 years, with an additional 14 years provided after renewal.  I find it hard to believe that anybody was ever convinced 28 years wasn’t good enough; if you can’t find a way to make money off of your work in the first 30 years, what good will 50 do you?  Set aside arguments about opt-in vs. opt-out, and the renewal requirement, and just think about duration.  We have copyright durations that extend past the author’s death.  That’s an incentive to creation.  Right.

Returning to Burnham: he doesn’t attempt to argue the economics of copyright, because doing so would involve actually refuting the Gowers Review, not just ignoring it.  Instead, he offers, “There is a moral case for performers benefiting from their work throughout their entire lifetime.”  Which is closer to the Continental tradition, but not necessarily false.  (Of course, if it’s really the artists he wants to protect, why not tie copyright expiration to a creator’s death?)  But the artists aren’t the ones who benefit from copyright extension.  Most recording copyrights are controlled by the labels, and that’s where most of the profits of extension go.  A moral argument might convince someone to change the rights included in copyright; adjust the terms to give the author more control, or to reduce the author’s ability to sell away their control.  But simply extending term doesn’t make any moral changes; it provides strictly economic benefits for big-name artists and their labels, but doesn’t do a thing for independents and less successful performers.  If Burnham wants to make a moral argument, then he should press for strengthening author’s rights, which is a much more fundamental, structural change to our system (based primarily on economic incentives).  If Burnham stopped to read the Gowers Review, or took the time to read any of the research (say, some of the amicus briefs form Eldred v. Ashcroft), it would be abundantly clear that another term extension would dramatically limit the public’s access to works while doing very little to encourage new creativity.

Consider the biggest potential beneficiary of Burnham’s extension: EMI Music, which holds copyright to the Beatles’ catalog.  Those copyrights start expiring (in Britain) in 2013.  Will a twenty-year extension get us more Beatles songs?

Photo by Roy Kerwood, hosted by Wikimedia Commons

John Lennon. Photo by Roy Kerwood, hosted by Wikimedia Commons

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February 10, 2009 — Adi Kamdar

Open: Why scientists should support open access

Photo by Gideon Burton via flickr

Photo by Gideon Burton via flickr

Congress is… odd. They introduce odd bills sometimes. But one bill, introduced to the house last week (February 3) by John Conyers, is especially odd… and kind of scary when it comes to open access. The bill has made publicknowledge.org angry because it removes the policy of the NIH that ensures taxpayer access to taxpayer-funded research within 12 months of the research’s publication. Why the heck would Conyers do this?

Supposedly he was just angry that the House Appropriations Committee bypassed the House Judiciary Committee when creating this policy. Conyers thought this was an issue of copyright. And it is… just… like the publicknowledge blog post says, it doesn’t change copyright law at all. Scientists are simply made to work within existing copyright law and put their research online, making it publicly available. I don’t know what Conyers was thinking, but scientists should be all for open access.

Why?

Well, first of all, let’s go through what open access is. Open access (and A2k, Access to Knowledge) means that certain resources, mainly journals and scholarly texts, are freely available to the public. Anybody can use the information posted (online) to learn, write a paper, or conduct further research–as long as he or she attributes the original author(s).

Open access is one of those pro-participation things that, really, would make the world better. Jack Balkin, a leader in the movement, notes how A2K is a human rights issue because of its ability to increase health, education, scientific progress, and more.

Today, I went to a talk by Victoria Stodden, who’s a post-doctoral fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management and a fellow with Science Commons. I semi-liveblogged it, but I’ll summarize and go through points that she mentioned.

Basically, scientific communication and publishing isn’t taking advantage of new technologies–as much as scientific research is. Stodden focused more on computational science–not experimental or deductive–based on simulations and modeling. Scientists, when they publish reports, almost never publish their codes or algorithms… which results in low reproducability, even from the scientists themselves!

Science is built on the idea of peer review. This is why open access makes so much sense. As we’ve seen with open source software, putting ‘code’ out in the open and letting others work on it leads to such progress. Scientific works, though, fall under copyright law and are copyrighted automatically, leading to unnecessary IP issues.

Stodden mentioned the purpose of copyright–and we’ve read it many times–is to prohibit copying and provide incentive to create. This–at least the former part–seems antithetical to the fundamentals of science. She proposed that scientists should release published reports under a CC BY license and code under a type of BSD license, modified to include attribution.

This is essentially what the NIH is having scientists do. Sites like PLoS are online journals that champion open access and allow scientists to publish their works with a CC BY license.

Now why would a scientist do this? And why doesn’t the use of scientific works fall under fair use? Well, it might, but we all know how ridiculous fair use is. Also, fair use is using something and not diminishing the value it has to the original copyright holder. Well, as Stodden mentioned, the value for scientists is attribution. And really, an open access system would be awesome for attribution purposes–by publishing your work to the commons, the number of derivative articles that would cite you would increase manyfold. The problem she mentioned is that, in certain cases, tens to hundreds to thousands of scientists could have input on a single paper. But, with newer technologies, this shouldn’t be a problem–one could simply utilize attribution tags of the power of search engines, etc.

In all, this is better for scientists and better for the world in general. Congress, by introducing that bill, is being really silly. And backwards. And potentially harmful to our scientific progress. If anything, they should expand the policy of open access to organizations like the National Science Foundation, which currently funds a lot (if not most?) of research. Unless this has already been done as per this recommendation.

Also, here’s the site for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and SPARC, because they’re relevant.

-Adi

This is the PS section. Basically, I wanted to either blog about this, the Google Book Search project, or the recent wikileaks posting. I’ll talk a little about the wikileaks posting. Notorious recently for posting Scientology documents and hacked pictures of Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account, the website just posted a billion dollars worth of Congressional Research Service reports. These reports, generated in secrecy (kinda) for Congress, are non-partisan, full of data, and in the public domain(!). However, because they’re generated for Congress, people don’t normally have access to them. Now they do. Hooray!

10 comments

February 9, 2009 — Carolyn N

Popeye in Public (Domain)

Popeye, the spinach loving sailor from Sweet Haven, should no longer find safe haven in copyright protection anymore—at least in Europe. With the death of Elzie Segar, Popeye’s creator, in 1938, Popeye’s days as a protected piece of art were numbered. Most European copyright laws extend legal protection for a work until 70 years after the creator’s death and with the end of 2008 came the end of Popeye’s supposed copyright status. Not so fast, claims King Features, Popeye’s current owner. While King Features concedes that Popeye’s copyright protection may have expired, it doesn’t mean that people should be expecting Popeye’s squinty mug everywhere. The company insists that it continues to “own” Popeye through trademark protection. And why not? European trademark law would provide King Features more time to collect royalties from merchandise featuring the iconic character and in a large market like Europe, much money is at stake.

While King Features’ tenuous claim remains in dispute, the greater controversy lies with the treatment of variable copyright expirations in the international community. Take U.S. copyright rules, for instance. Unlike the relatively straight forward approach to copyright in Europe, copyright law in the U.S. makes a distinction to the condition under which a work was created. Segar constructed the Popeye character while as a “work for hire” with the Hearst Syndicate. As a “work for hire,” the actual copyright transferred from Segar to his employer, which later sold the copyright to King Features. Because of this distinction, Popeye remains protected under copyright for another 25 years in the U.S. On the other hand, some places like Canada have placed Popeye in the public domain for more than two decades already!

The differing laws have created palpable tensions between innovators and copyright holders, which have worsened with the web. In terms of financial profits, it’s obvious why many copyright holders object: they are not entitled to royalties every time their work is used any longer. Manufacturers have one less cost to worry about for the same product and can even use the freed up funds to produce derivative works that could potentially bring in more money.

Yet, the value of the copyright provides something more besides monetary rewards. The right to all derivative works supplies an effective monopoly to the development and improvement of the product. In essence, it allows copyright owners to “tax” (there are very few notable exceptions where copyright owners ask only token amounts, if any, to use their work) those who want to build upon their handiwork. It deters creativity and experimentation because someone had to be certain that the resulting product would be more than worth the effort and cost of obtaining permission to use the piece. While there is fair use, it is not a right, but merely a legal defense that does not preclude the offending party from being sued.

The rationale behind copyright seems well-summarized in the U.S. Constitution, (Article I § 8) which is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” In line with such sentiments, the U.S. Congress enacted the first copyright law to protect works for 14 years with the chance of renewal for just 14 more years. After 14 or 28 years, everything would become a part of the public domain. Of course, back in 1790, the main copyrightable works were books, maps, and charts, but the emphasis was on limiting how long a copyright could exist. Since then, the practice has been veered towards increasing the number of years a work is copyrightable. In some ways, this doesn’t make much sense. With limited communication means to aid marketing and selling, not to mention fairly high cost investments towards producing a work in the past, it would have been reasonable to demand a longer copyright period in order to recuperate costs as well as reap in additional profits. Quite the opposite seems to occurring today where current technological developments occur so rapidly that designs become obsolete within months yet maintain copyright protection more than 10 times longer before the public can be free to use it without hassle. How long is too long? We’re now at the point where the demise of a copyright holder does not preclude him or her from retaining the monopoly over his or her work. Perhaps it’s a good time to relook at the intent of copyright protection: to safeguard intellectual property for a limited time in exchange for unlimited, free public use afterward.

For more details on the chart above, click here. Chart attributed to Tom W. Bell.

Edit note: My apologies to Professor L, I thought I had linked it earlier.

2 comments

February 4, 2009 — Michael W

The History and Future of the Remix

Remixes, as in the particular musical form, are importantly different from mash-ups and sampling. Remixes are reinterpretations of a single song, often quite significant departures from the original work, but nonetheless grounded in that one work. Mash-ups, in contrast, are combinations of multiple songs (though the individual pieces often resemble the originals far more closely than remix versions), and sampling involves the use of small slices of one work in another mostly new work (such as the use of a horns hook from a funk song in a hip-hop song).

The same questions that fill the discourses surrounding free downloads, mash-ups, and sampling apply here. Do remixes increase sales of the originals or undercut them? Do remixes constitute fair use or don’t they? The most important issue, though, is whether or not remixes constitute new or derivative works, which has important implications for whether or not remixers are free to distribute their art.

Self-administered remixes (i.e. artists and/or labels remixing their own songs) have been around for a while. They were thrust into the mainstream by (then-called-)Puff Daddy’s hip-hop label Bad Boy Records in the mid-90’s, who recycled and re-recycled their popular singles with remixes, and proclaim in multiple songs to have in fact “invented the remix.” In the past year, though, this conception of the remix has been challenged.

In the Fall of 2007 British alt rock juggernauts Radiohead made history by self-releasing their new album In Rainbows on a “pay-what-you-want” scale that started at “free.” They followed up this stunt, which was hugely successful — interestingly leading to far more legal sales of the record than of their previous record, by encouraging remixes of their work through selling the “stems” of one of their songs (“Nude”) for $0.99 a piece on iTunes. Aspiring remixers could purchase these stems, which are the individual main components of a song (in this example: vocals, guitars/synths, drums/percussion, string/fx), and remix them for their own pleasure, or to submit to a Radiohead-sponsored contest. This project led to the song, Nude, abruptly jumping up to #37 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts. It was so successful that they decided to sell the stems of another song of their album (“Reckoner”) in the same way.

The terms and conditions of Radiohead’s competition, though, are a little unsettling (terms). They specify that any remix submitted to the contest (or not, for that matter) is wholly owned by Radiohead’s US distributors, publishing company, and the band, even though Radiohead self-released this album. Despite Radiohead’s apparent progressiveness, their remixers fall into the same quagmire facing all other remixers: should people that push the boundaries of remixing to create something profoundly new be rewarded with the basic freedom to distribute their work?

Californian pop-rockers Third Eye Blind took notice of Radiohead’s experiment, and are currently engaged in a similar project. They’ve offered two tracks of their upcoming album Ursa Major, before the album is released, to be remixed by fans. It will be interesting to see whether or not this ploy increases the exposure for, and ultimately the sales of their new record when it is released this spring.

As remixing, both band-sanctioned and not, has spread throughout the internet, many websites have popped up to service this growing community. One such website is CC Mixter, which enables (and encourages) people to remix music under non-commercial Creative Commons licenses. In the FAQ’s section of the site, though, the webmasters are quick to point out that posting remixes under CC licenses on the site doesn’t necessary grant the remixers any distribution rights to their works. This is, from a common-sense perspective, a little perplexing, when you actually listen the remixes, many of which are near-unrecognizable from their original sources, and in many ways far more “transformative” than many mash-up and sample uses (to borrow a term made famous by the 1988 Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Supreme Court ruling that a parody of Roy Orbinson song “Oh, Pretty Women” was indeed “fair use” and did not violate copyright law, even despite of its commercial use, because of its “transformativeness“).

Artists encouraging the remixing of their own content is obviously uncontroversial. The implications, though, are. Ultimately, I think the only long-term solution is to redefine copyright law and fair use to fit the realities of the 21st century. In the meantime, however, does Radiohead’s success point to a potential solution for the music industry, not only for curtailing unsanctioned remixes, but also for dampening the similar supposed threats of mash-ups, peer-to-peer file sharing, and illicit sampling:

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?

5 comments

February 3, 2009 — Evin M

sound business: music, remixes and how our society is dealing with them

Remixed media, specifically music, is an increasingly visible component of pop culture, as evidenced by Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, Yo-yo Ma’s Indaba competition, and MTV’s MashUps.  The spectrum of fresh takes on preexisting works is now an established “safe-but-edgy” genre with wide appeal; it’s innovative but provides appropriate selections for the scenesters on lastnightsparty.com and Talbot’s Kids-clad middle schoolers alike.  It’s a fun concept—the idea that making music is no longer an activity only for those who can tickle ivory or sing likes angels.

The technological capacity to remix music is so readily available and user-friendly that making mash-ups is like making collages; in fact, it might be easier.  To make a collage, I need to physically get some scissors, glue, paper and magazines.  To make a remix, I just have to turn on my laptop; with some FOSS software and my iTunes library, I can create “music.”  Fill-in-the-blank forms make it equally easy to get a Creative Commons license for my deadly one-two punch combo of The Muppets and Tupac.  While various legal authorities might not agree that this is Fair Use, I’ve got some form of intent covered, right?  I can then post it on a music sharing website, upload it to my blog, and make it available in a P2P network.  In ten minutes, I can create an (ostensibly) original work, license it, and make it available to literally millions of people around the world.

Remixing is easy, popular, entertaining and essentially free.  I understand that changes to fundamental structure of the internet could limit the online exchange of remixed works (meaning some technical filter, e.g. DRM, to catch/stop transmission of remixed works) and that aggressively pursued copyright litigation could limit the unauthorized large-scale distribution of these works as well.  That being said, it’s hard to apply old regulations to new formats.  Current copyright law is outdated, overwhelmed, and unpopular with much of the consumer base to which its supporters cater.  If, say, Warner Music Group were to sue Girl Talk, then their corporate high horse might very well have its legs cut out from under it. As unlikely as this seems, a precedent of sorts has recently been set.  Abkco Music, which owns the rights to a Rolling Stones song that Lil Wayne (arguably) used in his recent album, pressured Wayne’s Cash Money Records label so much that the track was “pulled” from Tha Carter III.

A recent Georgia Tech study about JumpStart (described as an “online video sharing, editing, and remixing community”) scrutinized the online environment, and concluded that, when the property is intellectual and the goods digital, possession no longer seems like 9/10 of the law.   Their findings observe that the concepts of authority and authorship have been transformed alongside digital media, and have become relative within online communities as opposed to general within the broader spectrum of public space (and cyberspace).  It’s almost like a microgovernment.  Without clear definitions of authorship and a well-defined chain of authority, it seems like anything goes.  The A.P. can even demand that bloggers take down 39-word snippets from their critical pieces online (though, in all fairness, they did invite quite a backlash and are now “rethinking” the decision to make a fuss…and it’s kind of old news).

I don’t think remix and its consequent mass digital distribution can be controlled, especially when the collage-bit suppliers are sending off mixed signals.  Some artists ask for their work to be remixed, some are indifferent, some demand royalties for the use of their original pieces in derivative works.  When Le Tigre says “yes” and Metallica says “no,” we get an additional layer of complication on top of an already challenging question.  Websites like http://funkyremixes.com/ provide and promote remixes of music from bands that give the thumbs-up, and blurs the Y/N line even further.

I feel like I’m parroting Barlow by criticizing the current system and not offering an alternative, but I don’t really have one.  The warpspeed pace of technological development and commercial application is so far ahead of the sluggish legal system that we can’t possibly try to patch up today’s rules, which really evolved in yesterday’s social/technological environment, enough to address tomorrow’s clever loophole-finders.  We need a more open system of regulation that allows college kids to keep wasting time making bad music, permits fantastic mash-ups to be played on the radio, and rewards creative minds for their original works.

4 comments

February 3, 2009 — Mickey M

A Guided Tour of Mashups

Welcome, thank you for your interest in mashups and for joining me today.

Allow me to take you on a strong down Mashup Lane. Please note the internet below our feet, the crumbling ideals of copyright law behind us and the numerous clubs and DJs on our left and right sides. Up ahead you will see a new future of music interpretation. Hold on please!

DJs make mashups by combining music from two or more songs to make some new, derivative, arguably quite creative work. Since these seem to go against the core of copyright law as it is enforced the mashups generally are not sold but played by DJs at clubs and distributed online. Exceptions to this norm include Girl Talk and Big D and the Kids Table.

While many musical architects draw from other tracks and reuse beats and musical segments, mashup creation tends to emphasize the recognizability of the songs used. An effective mashup will create an ‘ah-ha’ moment of sorts, or a subtle smirk, as the songs taken out of context become more than they were alone. That sense of synergy makes mashup listening a very entertaining and rewarding pasttime, and thus my collection has grown steadily as I pursue even more DJs and compilations.

The next stop on our tour up ahead will be the collection complex. Many mashups are distributed as albums instead of individual tracks, often with a theme. DJ Danger Mouse created The Grey Album by combining Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles The Beatles, known frequently as The White Album. Taking great liberties with Green Day, the mashup team Dead Grey made American Idiot into American Edit. Each holiday season a team of DJs create Santastic, a mashup album full of Christmas-themed creations.

In San Francisco Adrian & the Mysterious D have been hosting mashup nights at clubs in San Francisco, currently at the DNA Lounge. Their site also collects mashups monthly and releases the best of the year in a collection each December. For the beginning connoisseur I highly recommend the content at Bootie and the annual collections.

When you have had a chance to visit more neighborhoods in Mashuptown you will start to develop a personal taste. I’d like to take this chance, before the end of our tour, to share with you some of my favorite sites.

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