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Posted Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Sunday, 1 June 2008, was the 100th anniversary of the first sale doctrine in the US.
As I’ve mentioned before in this billso.com article on 24 March 2008, the first sale doctrine allows someone who buys a book to resell it or pass it along as they see fit.
This important principle of US copyright law applies to other media, too. Last month, a Federal court upheld the rights of eBay sellers to vend software, according to this Ars Technia article. First sale allows people to resell or give away CDs, DVDs and other works that they purchased.
Creative Commons licenses allow users to share and adapt applicable works, which is an excellent extension of the first sale doctrine.
See this article in Everybody’s Libraries for more details
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Posted Monday, 2 June 2008
We use a Creative Commons license scheme at billso.com.
The license is embedded in every page of the site, and there is a link at the bottom of each page.
In short, anyone can use content from billso.com as long as the following conditions are met:
- Provide attribution to billso.com - give us some credit for what we wrote and posted, without implying that billso.com endorses your work.
- Remix and adaption are allowed. Again, give us credit!
- Sharing, copying and redistributing our content is OK, but include a link back to the billso.com URL where the content is posted.
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Posted Monday, 2 June 2008
I’ve written several articles about copyright and fair use.
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Posted Friday, 9 May 2008
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From the Associated Press via Sports Illustrated and Forbes: National Football League commissioner Roger Goddell has announced that the league will enact and enforce tougher regulations regarding technology and spying for the 2008 season. The NFL has allowed radios for offensive play-calling since 1994, but mobile computer and video technology have advanced far faster than the league’s regulations ever anticipated.
The three-time NFL champion New England Patriots have been the subject of intense scrutiny after a staff member was caught videotaping defensive coaching signals during the team’s 2007 season opener. The NFL and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) are each investigating multiple allegations that the Patriots had been videotaping opposing teams since coach Bill Belichick was hired in 2000.
Former Patriots employee Matt Walsh recently sent 8 video tapes of Patriots opponents to the NFL office for analysis. According to Mike Fish of ESPN, at least one tape included offensive coaches from another team. Previously, it was believed that the Patriots only taped defensive coaches.
What about the FCC?
Most of the discussions I have read about the so-called Spygate scandal have missed an important legal point. The NFL depends upon large multi-billion dollar contracts from US television networks for a significant portion of the league’s revenue and market power. Every regular-season and post-season game is televised. The NFL also owns and operates its own television network, which carries 8 regular season games, many pre-season games, and a 24/7 stream of interviews, documentaries, replays and other NFL content. See this article from CBS Sports for more details.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has specific regulations on how sports may be broadcast in the United States. One key rule is that live televised sporting events must be “free of artifice”. In other words, games cannot be rigged or fixed in any way.
This is one reason that professional wrestling broadcasts use a great deal of taped and edited content. Pro wrestling is marketed as , not a sporting event.
“When we met with [the] commissioner, the discussion was how we proceed in an era when technology is expanding exponentially,” Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian said. “The question is how do we keep on top of that. This is far less about what happened in the past and how we deal with it in the future.”
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ism tech
Posted Thursday, 3 April 2008
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From ZDnet, the New York Times and TechDirt comes this story: New York City has subpoenaed a TXTmob server that was used to coordinate street protests during the 2004 Republican national Convention.
The city’s lawyers are litigating civil suits brought by hundreds of protesters who were arrested during the convention. All the city’s lawyers want are the records of every user and message sent on the system.
TXTmob can be used to resend text messages to hundreds of mobile phones in real time. The software is available on the Institute for Applied Autonomy’s web site. Wikipedia has a good article about the service.
Tad Hirsch, the creator of the TXTmob software, does not want to release the information on his server:
“There’s a principle at stake here,” he said recently by telephone. “I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy.”
Hirsch has appealed for donations on his web site. Hirsch says some of that data no longer exists. He’s been busy writing his dissertation at MIT.
Who’s got the data?
There are many web and mobile services like Facebook and Twitter that could be used to coordinate protests, according to this Wired article. Groups need to consider who operates their messaging servers and who controls the data for their web services. Hosting an application like TXTmob on one’s own server is one way to avoid a Web portal or service provider’s restrictions.
Even so, the server has to be connected to the Internet, and the text messages are resent to subscribers through the mobile phone carriers servers. The telecom carriers routinely archive text messages sent through their systems, as I mentioned on 3 February 2008, and the carriers will provide messages and logs if subpoenaed.
I may have to revisit the article I wrote last year for the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics & Society. Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology had the following response regarding the TXTmob subpoena in Wired’s article, and I agree with him:
“In civil cases, the law seems to prohibit the disclosure of stored communications in response to a civil discovery subpoena because the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 prohibits disclosure of stored messages of any kind,” he argues. “The subpoena clearly is not enforceable.”
But he adds that the case is a reminder that federal privacy law is in dire need of an update to reflect the new era of massive stored communications and web services.
“The notion that any litigant can get any information about any person is an 18th century rule that now can now encompass terabytes of information, and I think it also has an impact on service providers who don’t want to become one-stop shops for every litigant in the country,” he says.
A local example
On Monday, Two hundred protesters used email and phone calls to organize their event at Fort Street Mall in support of Aloha Airlines. The US Bankruptcy Court is in 1132 Bishop, above the MSIS classrooms in the Frear Center. My office is a few steps away. This Honolulu Advertiser article has details and a few pictures.
I didn’t see anything about the march at DontFlyGo. Their web site is difficult to navigate, and the domain name is missing an apostrophe on the banner. Based on this Honolulu Advertiser article, there’s little indication that local groups might try to use mobile messaging to boycott go! flights.
Tags:
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government,
ISP,
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new-york,
politics,
privacy,
reliability,
SMS,
storage,
telecom
