by 1 comment on "CopySouth Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, coming up!"

Copy/South box logo

Third CopySouth Workshop

International Conference on Copyright Issues

The CopySouth Research Group is holding a conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the end of June.

The CSRG is the source of the wonderful Copy/South Dossier and the Alternative Primer on National and International Copyright Law, which we’ve written about here before.  Here’s their announcement about the conference…

The CopySouth Research Group (CSRG) invites you to attend and join in the debates at its three day international conference on copyright to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the end of June.

It is an important moment to discuss these issues. In 1710 — exactly three hundred years ago — the first copyright law in the world was enacted in England. Is this an anniversary worth celebrating? Around the world, the antiquated assumptions of copyright law and ideology are again being questioned and new conflicts are breaking out. In Brazil, for example, more than 500 musicians, writers, academics and others signed an open letter in late May calling on their government to reform its copyright laws so that users can have more access to music and books. Meanwhile, the well-financed campaign against so-called copyright “piracy” has become even more vocal and threatens us all… except large corporations. Although three of the most important countries in the global South — China, India and Brazil —  were not even invited to the talks, a new anti-piracy treaty called ACTA is about to be signed by rich nations in North America and Europe, as well as Japan and a few smaller countries.

As we meet, a list of long-standing and complex questions is demanding new answers. Do most musicians benefit from the copyright system and the current way that the music industry is organised? How can we promote far more access to educational materials in the countries of South America, Africa and Asia than already exists? And, speaking of access and sharing, why do so many ideas and so many cultural products flow from the North to the South… and why do so few flow the other way? Can we justify the current economic logic of the global copyright system? And what are viable alternatives to the current system?

To address these questions and many more that you may want to raise, the CSRG has assembled a group of leading critical researchers, musicians and activists from around the world to come to Rio and to speak on seven panels. The speakers are from Brazil (7), Chile (1), Bolivia (1), Cuba (2), the United States (3), South Africa (2), Ghana (1), the Philippines (2), Switzerland (1), and the United Kingdom (2).

We expect some strong opinions to be voiced and some good open debates to occur. So we extend an open invitation to all people interested in these issues, such as students, librarians, teachers, researchers, musicians and information activists, to attend.

There will be simultaneous interpretation in Portuguese, Spanish and English. We hope to see you in Rio on 28 June.

by 17 comments on "GAO Report Debunks Claims that Piracy is a Major Threat to U.S. Economy"

Victor Cohen (portrait)

Our legal intern Victor Cohen noticed a curious juxtaposition recently:

 

At the same as the copyright industry was saying unauthorized copying is more of a threat than ever to economic health, the U.S. government was saying… it’s not. Or at least, that there’s no convincing evidence it is. Thanks to Victor for writing up this analysis, and, along the way, for calling out the GAO on their confusion of counterfeiting and unauthorized copying — a frequent problem with the U.S. government and one we’ve noted before.

 

 

A couple of months ago, a collection of seven entertainment industry groups including the RIAA, the MPAA, and the Screen Actor’s Guild submitted a filing in response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s request for comments on its upcoming “Joint Strategic Plan” to carry out its enforcement duties. Their main concern is that digital piracy “undermines our economy, steals our jobs and threatens our national interest.” [1] As a remedy, the industry puts forward a breathtakingly draconian wishlist of enforcement measures, including:

  • ISP-level monitoring and filtering of files or traffic, website blocking and redirection, bandwidth throttling, and monitoring software installed on individual users’ computers to check for copyright infringement. [2]

  • Bypassing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice-and-takedown procedure by allowing copyright owners to create databases of works or digital files and force ISPs — in order to qualify for the DMCA § 512 safe harbor — to automatically take down any matching content uploaded to their network and to prevent matching content from being uploaded or linked to at all. [3]

  • Making the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security follow the industry’s schedule by coordinating piracy interdiction efforts with new releases of blockbuster movies. [4]

In order to argue for such a staggering array of privacy invasions, network neutrality violations, ISP-burdening expansions of the DMCA, and reallocations of federal agents away from preventing more life-threatening crimes, the industry groups that made this filing must have a solid mountain of evidence that piracy poses a major threat to the American economy and the very existence of the entertainment industry, right?

Unfortunately they don’t, says the U. S. Government Accountability Office. On April 12, the GAO released a report entitled “Intellectual Property: Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods” that closely examined the data and research methodologies that have been used to argue and formulate government policy on exactly this issue. The report’s conclusion is vastly different from that of the industry: “Each method has limitations, and most experts observed that it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts [of piracy and counterfeiting].” [5] Though it did call piracy a “sizeable” problem, it cast serious doubt on the three main studies that the industry has used to make its case: a 2002 FBI economic impact study had “no record of source data or methodology,” a 2002 DHS Customs and Border Protection division estimate of lost revenue and jobs had been discredited, and the FTC was unable to locate any record of making a lost sales estimate that is attributed to it. [6]

The GAO went on to highlight weaknesses it found in the Business Software Alliance’s 2009 piracy estimates and a similar study published by the MPAA’s international counterpart, the Motion Picture Association. It was important to consider, noted the GAO, that there is not necessarily a one-to-one rate of substitution between pirated works and lost sales. In other words, not every pirated album equates to a lost sale, since consumers sometimes like a song or an album enough to download it for free, but not enough to purchase it. Also, piracy estimates made in one country are not necessarily easily extrapolated to another. [7] In addition, studies that use a set of multipliers known as the RIMS-II multipliers to show how capital changes in one industry affect another generally do not take into account the effect of the extra disposable income that downloaders will have available to spend in other parts of the economy as a result of not having paid for the content. [8] In a nutshell, this money does not vanish into thin air, it is spent in other ways so that there is no net loss to the economy as a whole.

Finally, the GAO lamented the lack of data showing the positive effects that piracy can have on the economy. These include the benefit to consumers of having lower-priced goods available and the ability of consumers to sample music or other copyrighted works before they purchase them as a means of encouraging further sales. [9]

While the industry’s wishlist is just a set of recommendations at the moment, proposals as extreme as the ones listed above can easily find their way into other forms of regulation. Right now, the U.S. is in the middle of negotiations for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which even in its current draft form discusses an enhanced, global version of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as ISP filtering and three-strikes policies for copyright infringers. The United Kingdom has already become the victim of bad figures, when they helped pass the Digital Economy Act on April 12th. France’s highly unpopular HADOPI law, which incorporates a three-strikes disconnection policy, has been in place since October, 2009.

The industry groups’ proposals are drastic, broad, and devastating to the internet, to privacy, and to free expression online. Before the IPEC or any government body considers them, it should heed GAO’s warnings and demand better evidence that piracy is indeed as much of a threat to the economy as the industry claims. We must be vigilant that our own treaty negotiations, agency rulemakings, and legislation are based on solid data that takes into account all the effects, positive and negative, that piracy can have on our economy.

References:

[1] Comments of Creative Community Organizations, pp. 2, March 24, 2010: http://www.dga.org/news/pr-images/2010/Joint-submission-re-IPEC.pdf; last accessed 04/25/2010. [2] Id at 10. [3] Id at 17. [4] Id at 12-13. [5] United States Government Accountability Office, Intellectual Property: Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods, (this page is not numbered, please see the page titled “Highlights”), April 12, 2010: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423; last accessed 04/25/2010. [6] Id at 18-19. I must note GAO’s confusing language here: it refers to the studies individually as pertaining to counterfeiting, which is a separate issue from piracy, but then collectively as “referenced by various industry and government sources as evidence of the significance of the counterfeiting and piracy problem to the U.S. economy.” [7] Id at 22 [8] Id at 23 [9] Id at 14-15

by 16 comments on "Internet Archive launches new service for the print-disabled: free access to over 1 million books, including current titles."

Internet Archive logo

The Internet Archive launched a new service yesterday, bringing free access to more than 1 million books in the specially designed format to support those who are blind, dyslexic or are otherwise print-impaired.

This is great news just in terms of giving so many people easier access to books, but it’s also interesting as an application of a little-known provision of U.S. copyright law — the Chafee Amendment of 1996, which states:

“…it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute copies or phonorecords of a previously published, nondramatic literary work if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.”

The new service demonstrates the principle behind the Chafee Amendment: that copyright is a conditional monopoly, not a property right, and that when we decide the monopoly is hampering an important public purpose, we can change it. The Chafee Amendment is an open acknowledgement that monopoly-based distribution was not serving the needs of the blind, the visually impaired, or dyslexic people very well, and that fixing that situation is simply a policy decision. It reminds us that copyright itself is a policy decision, and that if it is not serving the public well, we can change the policy.

The Internet Archive’s press release is below:

More than doubling the number of books available to print disabled people of all ages, today the Internet Archive launched a new service that brings free access to more than 1 million books — from classic 19th century fiction and current novels to technical guides and research materials — now available in the specially designed format to support those who are blind, dyslexic or are otherwise visually impaired.

“Every person deserves the opportunity to enhance their lives through access to the books that teach, entertain and inspire,” said Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. “Bringing access to huge libraries of books to the blind and print disabled is truly one of benefits of the digital revolution.”

Kahle also announced that the Internet Archive will be investing in the growth of its virtual bookshelf by funding the digitization of the first 10,000 books donated. Individuals and organizations are welcome to donate their favorite book or a collection of books. Books in all languages welcome. To donate books visit: http://openlibrary.org/bookdrive

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “Blind people must have access to repositories of digital information if we are to reach our goal of becoming full and equal participants in society. Access to the books that have been scanned by the Internet Archive in a format accessible to the blind will be another step toward that goal. We are excited about continuing to work with Internet Archive to make access to more books a reality.”

The 1 million+ books in the Internet Archive’s library for print disabled, are scanned from hard copy books then digitized into DAISY — a specialized format used by blind or other persons with disabilities, for easy navigation. Files are downloaded to devices that translate the text and read the books aloud for the user to enjoy. To access books visit: http://openlibrary.org/subjects/accessible_book

Jessie Lorenz is a 31 year old woman who was born blind and is the Associate Director of at the Independent Living Resource Center in San Francisco. She believes, “Knowledge is power – and like everyone else, blind and print disabled people need equitable access to books to help them be innovative, productive, contributing community members.”

Older books are available from the Internet Archive’s unencrypted DAISY library and modern books can be accessed by “qualified users” through their NLS key — an encrypted code provided by the Library of Congress’ National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), that is dedicated to providing materials to the print disabled. Currently, over 800,000 people in the US are registered with the Library of Congress as being print disabled.

As of today, the Internet Archive offers over one million books for print disabled people. Other large libraries for the print disabled including NLS, Bookshare.org, and Reading for the Blind & Dyslexic.

“This demonstrates why having open and public access to published works is so important,” said Kahle.

Ben Foss, President of Headstrong, an advocacy group for people with dyslexia said, “As dyslexic and print-disabled students scramble to complete their end-of-year research papers and projects, beginning today, there is a great new library of resources that will expand the tools these young people need to be successful in school and in life.”

By leveraging automated scanning and conversion processes, Internet Archive technicians can conduct a cost-efficient scan of more than one thousand books per day. Books are scanned at sites located in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other major cities in five countries. Most of the older scanned books have been reformatted for the print-disabled from broad digitizing projects. Scanned physical books came from the collections of over 150 libraries, most of which are in the Open Content Alliance, but others as well. The funding of those scanning projects is coming from foundations, corporations and governments.

Most of the older books have been scanned from library collections, with newer books having been donated to the Internet Archive by companies such as the online bookseller Alibris, libraries and individuals.

The print disabled collection of books are now available through the Archive’s new Open Library site (www.openlibrary.org), which serves as a gateway to information about millions of hardcopy books and more than 1 million electronic books.

The Internet Archive will continually increase the number books it makes available. They are currently seeking donations of books and ebooks from individuals, libraries and publishers. The Archive is announcing today its commitment to fund the scanning and automatic processing of the first 10,000 donated books. Any organization or individual that would like to make particular books or collections available are encouraged to donate them by sending them to the Internet Archive. For donations of large collections please contact the Internet Archive. Financial support is also welcome to expand the program.

To access all books, a United States resident with print disabilities must register with the Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/nls/signup.html.

The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that was founded to build an Internet library. Its missions are to offer universal access to all knowledge and provide specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. Internet Archive, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco California 94118, info@archive.org, www.archive.org www.openlibrary.org +1-415-561-6767.

Press contact: Pattie Haubner phaubner@douglasgould.com
(914) 833-7093, (914) 275-2984

by 3 comments on "How an Audience-Distributed Film Won Big: talk at WordCamp SF"

Karl Fogel

Update — video available: wordpress.tv/2010/05/01/karl-fogel-audience-distributed-film-sf10 (start at 2 min 24 sec to skip unrelated intro about conference lunch)

Update — slides available: ODP PDF

I gave a talk at WordCamp San Francisco this Saturday, May 1st: Bodysurfing the Blogosphere: How an Audience-Distributed Film Won Big. It’s an in-depth look at how audience distribution worked for Nina Paley’s freely-licensed film “Sita Sings the Blues”. The talk was live-streamed, and we expect to have the downloadable video in a few days; we’ll post it when it’s available.

Think of this talk as the story behind the numbers, with a big nod to the disintermediation technologies (including WordPress, which I’ve had running my personal blog for years) that made it possible for a filmmaker’s audience to become both her primary distributor and her primary source of income; the film also has commercial distributors, and I talked about that too.

Speaking of the blogosphere:

Our Artist-in-Residence, Nina Paley, has written a terrific post on her blog about why she stuck to her guns (er, or her USB sticks) and told Netflix no on DRM. She explained that they were welcome to offer her film Sita Sings the Blues on their streaming service only if they could offer it without Digital Restrictions Management that would interfere with viewers’ ability to see, save, and share the film. Netflix wouldn’t take off the DRM, and although Nina, as the licenseholder, could have granted them an exception, she chose not to, despite the considerable potential loss to her in viewers and in money.

She’s gotten a lot of comments on her decision, with some people saying they didn’t understand her objection to DRM on a streaming service. So she wrote a followup post What’s wrong with “streaming” DRM? that explains the issue so clearly that we’ll probably be appropriating it for this site at some point :-).

Enjoy both posts, and remember: one way to support her decision is to donate to the Sita Distribution Project. We’ve seen a spike in donations since she made her decision public, and that’s a great feeling.

by 4 comments on "The Cobbler: A New Career Model for Artists and Entertainers"

Laure Parsons

A media professional with several years of experience in distribution and production, Laure Parsons is a consultant and filmmaker specializing in new approaches and technologies. Most recently Director of Home Media Sale and Marketing at Zeitgeist Films, she has worked for National Film Board of Canada, New Yorker Films and Tribeca Film Festival. She can be found at xplusxfilms.com and infinicine.com.

In the past, high production and distribution costs have forced artists into a kind of gambling mentality. In order to reach audiences, artists had to rely on production companies and distributors, who in turn had to take a large percentage of revenues to cover the high costs associated with producing a film, making a run of books, or releasing an album.

Because distributors spread their risk across many different works, betting that a few will “make it big”, artists too were led to a lottery attitude: your work either won big or not at all. If a work had the fortune to make it big, it could sometimes make money for the artist despite many middlemen taking their pieces — but if it did not, the artist was unlikely to make much money at all.

Also, since the distributors would put more effort behind the works that served them better, the “successful” works tended to be the ones which had the most charged back against their royalties. So even the “successes” were of more benefit to distributors than to artists.

As cheap, digital means of production and dissemination emerge, however, a new paradigm for artists is emerging too. Filmmakers, musicians, and writers now have the opportunity to work in a more stable, less risky way — with an economic model like a corner shoe cobbler, with a skill and a loyal clientele. While it may not have the glamour of red carpets and stadium shows, it can be a life in which one’s vocation is sustainable, at a level that pays a living wage and allows one to be one’s own boss. One trades a small chance of making a lot of money quickly for a greatly improved chance of making some money steadily. For many artists, that’s a good trade-off.

Already many filmmakers are experimenting with separating theatrical or broadcast licensing from online distribution or nontheatrical screenings, in what is typically referred to as “hybrid distribution”. In film, most of the mechanisms available at this time for generating revenue online (such as iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu) require the filmmaker to use a middleman. Revenues from these services for independent films will generally not be more than $50K altogether, and they will most likely be under $10K for the first year or two, before subtracting the fees of the middleman. Some filmmakers cut out the middleman entirely and sell their films directly on DVD or online, arrange their own screenings, etc.

Other artists are exploring strategies that directly exploit the audience’s desire to connect with and support the artist. This is the approach taken successfully by Amanda Palmer (see “Why I’m not Afraid to Take your Money”) and Nina Paley (“Sita Sings the Blues”), for example. By completely giving up the small possibility of “going gold” in a centralized distribution system, they’ve opened up the more likely possibility of making a steady living through the support of a fan base that is best reached through decentralized means.

For the first time, it is possible for a filmmaker to make a film on a very small budget, use promotion and distribution methods that are low-cost or free, and find enough revenue to break even and possibly to support themselves in a basic fashion. It means you probably won’t become a millionaire, but in return your chances of being able to support yourself through your work go up, and they go up more the better your work is.

To succeed this way, artists must be realistic about the quality of their work — but that’s always been the case: engaging directly with audiences just makes it the case sooner. And artists have to learn some new skills. Finding and engaging with an audience can be time-consuming, and not all artists are equally suited to it. Fortunately, many aspects of this process can be outsourced, and in some cases distributors are learning to sell services to artists instead of trying to control access to their work. There are even tools that allow filmmakers to create their own distribution strategies while contracting others to do hard sales or theatrical booking.

Not everyone who can shine shoes is cut out to own their own shoe repair business, and not all artists are cut out to manage a small business in media creation. But for the first time, artists have a real choice about distribution, and for some of them, being a cobbler will have a lot more appeal than being a gambler.

by 36 comments on "Final Version of “Copying Is Not Theft” Released!"

The first official release of Copying Is Not Theft is now ready, with a new sound track arranged by Nik Phelps and sung by Connie Champagne:


Download the high-res version at archive.org.

Question Copyright’s first Minute Meme is a response to messages that have tried to convince people that copying information is the same as stealing property, when it’s an entirely different (and generally positive) thing. Until the air is cleared on that point, it’s hard to have any kind of useful conversation about copying, sharing, copyright, or licensing.

The purpose of these Minute Memes is to give educators and commentators more tools to help clear the air. Copying is not Theft conveys its simple idea with a catchy tune, clever lyrics, and delightful animation by Nina Paley. Many thanks to Nik Phelps and Connie Champagne for a terrific sound track. We also thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for supporting this meme and others with a generous grant. Copying Is Not Theft is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

See the Minute Memes home page for more about the project. See the Copying Is Not Theft home page for more about this meme and for other arrangements, remixes, and mashups, based on the draft Nina released last December.

by 5 comments on "Brian Lehrer Live television interview with Nina Paley and Karl Fogel"

Brian Lehrer renowned radio host at WNYC (New York Public Radio) interviewed Nina Paley and Karl Fogel on his CUNY TV show Brian Lehrer Live on February 17th.  The conversation ranged from Nina’s distribution model for her film Sita Sings the Blues to the broader copyright reform movement, and they showed two of the Minute Memes as well.  The video is now available:

It’s the middle segment of a three-segment show. The entire show is worth watching, too. The first segment is a debate about the ACTA (“Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”) treaty and how it tightens international copyright restrictions. If you follow copyright reform at all, you’ll be frustrated at how resolutely the participants neglect to question the assumptions (for one thing, copying is not counterfeiting). We tried to come back to some of those points during the middle segment. The third segment is a fascinating interview with Jen Bekman and Jonathan Melber of 20×200, with artist Clare Grill joining by video chat. In all segments, the host, Brian Lehrer, asks good questions; he’s obviously been thinking about the issues.

by 2 comments on "An Alternative Primer on National and International Copyright Law"

Reading the alternative primer on national and international copyright law.

QuestionCopyright.org recently received a wonderful surprise in the mail: An Alternative Primer on National and International Copyright Law in the Global South, by Prof. Alan C. Story and his colleagues at The CopySouth Research Group. It’s a 66 page critical survey of not only international copyright laws and treaties, but of the processes by which those laws and treaties come to be enacted.

I wrote back to Prof. Story:

It’s a great relief to see some unembarrassed copyright skepticism in academic legal studies.  In every other field, questioning of assumptions is considered good practice; [copyright] law seems to have somehow been exempt from this for a long time, and I’m not quite sure why.  Too many scholars repeat the same theories of why we have copyright, without looking rigorously at its actual history nor at its effects, quantifiable and otherwise.  Your primer is a breath of fresh air.

He responded with the following offer to all readers:

 

If anyone would like to receive a printed copy, we now have some available. People should write:

To: contact {_AT_} copysouth.org
Subject: Primer request

Messages should include name and FULL postal address.  Those requesting a copy will get one in the mail within 10 days or so.  We particularly welcome requests from librarians: we will send them two copies, one as a personal copy and one for her/his library collection. … We also have a fresh supply of printed copies of the CopySouth Dossier.  The same instructions, just put “Dossier request” in the subject line.
 

You can, of course, read and download the entire primer online.  I recommend sampling it there, because afterwards you’ll be much more likely to take Prof. Story up on his offer to send you a physical copy.  It’s thoroughly footnoted and obviously the product of both a good deal of survey work and careful thinking, but above all it’s simply a good read.  I came out of it simultaneously entertained, informed, and ultimately outraged at the sheer arbitrariness and nonsensicality of these laws.  Some highlights: try the footnotes on pages 34-35, or the discussion on pages 56-57 of why the U.S. and other Berne Convention signatories object to Iran’s copyright policy today resembling the United States’s copyright policy of the nineteenth century.

The primer is a convincing demonstration of why neutrality need not be a condition of good scholarship.  The CopySouth Research Group has a point of view, certainly, but because of that point of view are able to shed much light on the reality of global copyright law.

Now, please request one copy for yourself and one for your local library!

See also Professor Story’s talk “The global copyright system: unbalanced and unbalanceable for educational access in the global South“, given at The South Centre, Geneva, Switzerland, November 2009.

by 0 comments on "The Creator-Endorsed Mark in Action: Mars Yau’s Sita iPhone apps"

Sita_iPhone_FREE

Sita Sings the Blues is now available FREE for the iPhone, rather than for $3.99. The former price was required because for every copy of Sita “sold,” I had to pay almost $2 to extortionate corporate licensors. That’s a flat fee; doesn’t matter what the sale price is. So selling Sita apps for the customary $.99 would result in a huge loss for me, since I’d be paying far more than that to the licensors.

The solution of course was to make it FREE (gratis). They’re all Promotional Copies. No sale, no license fee. To support Mars Yau, who created the app, and me, who created the movie, you can buy the Sita Wallpaper App for $.99. And of course you can always donate to the Sita Distribution Project.

I’m especially gratified by app develope Mars Yau’s correct use if the Creator Endorsed Mark. It’s displayed prominently on the free app, indicating my authentic endorsement of this particulr distribution. On the $.99 Wallpaper app, he applied the “50% supports the artist” version:

 

SitaWallpaperLeft.480x480-75 SitaWallpaperRight.480x480-75

This lets potential buyers know that he will share with me 50% of his profits from the app. Since the wallpaper app is offered for sale as a way to support me and him (since the movie app is gratis) the 50% Creator Endorsed Mark is a selling point, adding value to it.