Preliminary work on end of semester paper for Copyright, Cyberlaw and the New Free Culture class:

Assignment:

“Part of the paper will be focused on a concise but detailed history of the project, and will require research and references to primary sources. This means if you’re writing about a particular subject inside Wikipedia, you’ll want to describe and reference (via Talk Page Archives or individual snapshots of the pages) all the substantive components, arguments, and decisions that contributed to its current consensus. Similarly, if you’re discussing a general topic or event, you’ll want to detail its original inception, the ideas and principles that garnered it momentum, and so on.

What role does or did copyright play in your project’s history? What are the important legal decisions and relevant bits of copyright law that affect your project? How is it involved in the larger narrative of cultural production in a digital age?  And finally, to what extent does your topic implicate and problematize traditional commerce?

You will be graded on your attention to detail and understanding of the origins of the project, so it will be important to go beyond what the public may already know about it. I want to be convinced that you’re an expert on this subject, and you can demonstrate as much by going in-depth and delivering a narrative that might not have otherwise been heard.

In the second half of your paper, I want you to discuss your interaction with its community and the project as a whole. How did you find it? What were you able to achieve? What did you intend to achieve? What would you change if you did it again?”

Preliminary Work

I’ve chosen to look at a local group, specifically so I can step away from my computer and meet people.  NYU has a strong history of participation in the Free Culture Movement.  I am looking at the Students for Free Culture group for this paper, and getting involved with the NYU Chapter.

In early April I met with their Vice-President to discuss how the group is run and the challenges they face as a group working as activists on the issue of free culture.  More to come…

Comments on recent reading for @mecredis’ Copyright, Cyberlaw and Free Culture class this evening….

Fred’s class is a big ongoing history lesson for recent history, where 5 years ago often seems a real long way back.  Since January, we’ve romped through topics such as the Statute of Anne (ok, that’s pretty ancient), the concept of fair use, the DMCA, Eldred, Google Books, TOR, Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman, Wikipedia, and we’re still going…

This week we read Professor Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks – Chapter 3: Peer Production and Sharing.  There’s only one small part I’m going to comment on this week, and it ties back to the “jeez , history just got way less dusty than I’m used to” point.

At the end of the chapter, there is a short discussion of spectrum policy.  Professor Benkler explains the concept of a “spectrum commons” and the fact that WiFi sat in the realm of “low-power devices like garage openers and the spurious emissions of microwave ovens.” 

Now, unless you have been locked in a garage or had your head in a microwave oven over the past week or so you can’t have missed the ginormous amounts of press on the recent publication of the FCC’s Broadband Plan.  The Plan addresses the issue of spectrum directly and according to the NYT, the FCC hopes to “free up roughly 500 megahertz of spectrum, much of which would come from television broadcasters“  (NYT, 03/12/10).

Spectrum is but one of many issues to be looked at as we try to improve the provision of broadband to US citizens, open access and increasing competition for example being of critical importance.  I mention spectrum in this post specifically though to highlight how the history Fred is telling us about is very much evolving and changing.  The fact that a piece published 4 years ago that are studying as ‘history’ is authored by someone who is in the press this weekend on these issues again, being debated, and considered – and of seriously critical importance: its great. I’m struggling for the right phrasing, but essentially, when we study history, it helps us to learn and contemplate, and really think about the issues raised if the lessons pop. Happily – right now in this field, these lessons are snap-crackling at the moment.

Copyright & Cyberlaw

Class 2: February 3rd – Fair Use & Remix Culture

• Joy Garnett, Steal this Look
• Matthew Rimmer, The Grey Album: Copyright Law and Digital Sampling
• David Bollier, Viral Spiral: Chapter 3: When Larry Lessig met Eric Eldred

Molotov – Joy Garnett

Sometimes there are topics that make your brain turn loops, fizz, and fall over.  The rights of artists to protect their work, in the form they created it, balanced against the rights of other artists to mash-up, re-invent and progress the bounds of art is one of those topics.

We discussed the Meiselas-Garnett controversy at length last year in Comm Lab.  My colleague Lee-Sean Huang wrote a thoughtful post arguing that it was in fact the subject of the art, Pablo Arauz that had really been ignored.  He wasn’t asked how his image was used.  Am not sure how far this argument can run given the number of people depicted in art works.  However, his point, its “not about you” in reference to both artists did pull the discussion up to a cloud-eye view of the rights that people have when something of them is in a piece of art – whether initial creator, subject or re-mixer.

From “Nicaragua” Susan Meiselas

How do you make sense of copyright laws?  This week’s reading bombarded us with cases, theories and real life issues.  To me its pretty clear cut.  There are two main reasons for copyright:

• to allow authors to profit from their work (and not those who didn’t do the work)
• to protect authors from having their work changed to something they didn’t intend it to be

The first one seems pretty fair, and I argued this last year in Comm Lab.  Argument as follows: “I made something, I put time and effort into producing it, I want to reap the financial rewards from my work.” Ok – that seems fair to me.  And the argument that other people do not deprive someone of the profits from  a piece of work that can be replicated, eg software, doesn’t wash with me.  Loss of profits from the nth sale of a good, will still deprive the author of income if it is replicated.

What if there’s no money?

This is the juicy issue.

The Sonny Bono Act extended copyright terms, allowing the owners of work to benefit from longer copyright ownership, the well cited example being Disney and Mickey Mouse.  But what about sweeping up works that are no longer commercially valuable, yet still copyrighted, and putting them into the public domain, just like Eldred?  This is a different issue.  This is about access to works.  Is a copyright commons the answer?

The idea of a commons as discussed in the Rimmer piece is particularly interesting now that it is 4 years out of date.  His concern that the concept of Creative Commons might not work with those outside the legal world (“non-legal actors”) will be fun to discuss in class this evening given I suspect that a roomful of non-legal actors will be sitting there, most of them with CC licenses on their Flickr photo collections.  How do we judge the success of an alternative form of copyright?  Specifically, is the key indicator of its success the number of avoided litigation suits, or is it the increase in legal remixing, or finally, can its success be measured simply by its widespread use?

An alternative to traditional copyright was sorely needed at the time Lessig met Eldred, and also when Garnett got the letter from Meiselas’ lawyers.  We’ve got one with quite a large user-base now compared to then.  But CC is currently still an opt-in system.  It is not an overhaul of the legal copyright system as a whole.  All good reforms however, begin with the adventurous few, grow to the open minded early-adopters, until the people in control start to take notice.  I think that is definitely going on now in the copyright field at the moment.  Thank you Lessig.

Course Description (from course wiki)

Jammie Thomas-Rasset