Tag: Copyright
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Where Are the Legal Lossless Downloads?
I must have been very nice last year, because Santa brought me a Sonos Connect Wireless HiFi System and Network Attached Storage (NAS) with Wake-on-LAN for Christmas. This particular combination of hardware can mean only one thing: I will spend the waning days of 2012 and the beginning days of 2013 ripping my entire CD…
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Facebook Copyright Statement: Not Entirely Silly
There’s a meme going around on Facebook, saying that you should post a certain legal incantation on your Facebook wall, to reclaim certain rights that Facebook would otherwise be taking from you. There’s an interesting counter-meme in the press now, saying that all of this is pointless and of course you can’t change your rights…
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Is Spotify the Celestial Jukebox for Music?
In 1994, law professor Paul Goldstein popularized the term “celestial jukebox” to refer to his vision of a networked database of consumable on-demand media. In the face of copyright law that was ill-suited to the rapid rate of technological change, he described a system in which consumers would pay-per-play rather than purchasing and owning individual…
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The Decline of DVD-by-Mail, or Further Thoughts on the Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine
Netflix reported a second-quarter profit last week as customer demand continues to drive a transition in the company’s primary delivery model from DVD-by-mail to Internet streaming. According to The New York Times, “he company’s net losses among DVD-by-mail subscriptions outpaced its gains in net streaming subscriptions in the United States, reflecting the continued challenge of…
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Opening Government: On the Limits of FOIA and the Metaphor of Transparency
At a recent symposium (“Piracy and the Politics of Policing: Legislating and Enforcing Copyright Law”) sponsored by the Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal, I was invited to respond to an excellent paper by David Levine on secrecy, national security, and the denial of public access to documents from the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiation…
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Contract hacking and community organizing
I discussed community discontent with copyright terms of some scholarly publishers, and I proposed an economic analysis. Now let’s consider two other approaches. Contract hacking I have published quite a few scholarly papers, and with each one I am invited to sign a copyright form. This is a contract between author and publisher, which which…
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Modest Proposals for Academic Authors
In the scuffles over copyright policies on scholarly articles, what is the academic author to do? First, inform yourself. Find and read the copyright policy of the journals (or refereed conferences) to which you submit the articles describing research results. Find out the subscription price (dead-tree-edition or online) that the publisher charges individuals and institutions,…
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Copyright in Scholarly Publishing, 2012 Edition
I’ve heard a lot recently about copyright policies of scholarly journals. Over 9000 researchers signed a pledge to boycott Elsevier, on three grounds: (1) high prices for journal subscriptions, (2) bundling practices for institutional subscriptions; (3) lobbying regarding SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act. Meanwhile, other organizations such as the ACM (scholarly/professional society for…
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The Latest in Nationwide Internet User Identification – Part 2 (the All-New, So-Called Federal Co-Conspirator Theory)
Since Part 1 in this series a few months ago, Plaintiffs have continued to file “pure bill of discovery” suits in Florida state court. These proceedings typically involve “John Does” who are accused of copyright infringement via peer-to-peer networks. The Plaintiffs (copyright-holders or their delegates) have continued to name as defendants in those “pure discovery”…
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Join Us at Princeton Tomorrow for "Copyright Cat-and-Mouse: New Developments in Online Enforcement"
Tomorrow afternoon, the Center for Information Technology Policy is hosting an event that looks at the state of online copyright enforcement and the policy perspectives of the parties involved. We’ve got a great lineup, with folks from the content industry, internet service providers, web companies, academics, and the press. Date: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 Time:…