The "copyright" industry consisting of a technologically obsolete Hollywood studios; music recording companies; and publishers of books is minuscule . To protect this pipsqueak industry, the Obama administration proposes both through the Department of Justice and the ACTA to impose draconian steps that will threaten many other not so pipsqueak industries, including the IT industry. Michele and I have pointed out the problem before. Finally the rest of industry has realized the threat - here is a report report on the magnitude of the industry that depends on "fair use."

Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.

Update: This is also worth taking a look at -

http://ideas.4brad.com/studio-does-content-id-takedown-my-hitler-video-about-takedowns

A friend of mine is going to be a panelist at this event, World's Fair Use Day, which

is a free, all-day celebration of the doctrine of fair use: the legal right that allows innovators and creators to make particular uses of copyrighted materials. WFUD will take place at the Newseum in Washington D.C. on Tuesday January 12, 2010, and will be organized by Public Knowledge (PK), a Washington D.C.-based non-profit, consumer-advocacy group. PK works to ensure that communications and intellectual property policies encourage creativity, further free expression and discourse and provide universal access to knowledge. As part of its campaign to return balance to copyright law, PK hopes to use WFUD to educate the public about the importance of fair use in an information society.

Enhancing the fair use exception is all to the good, but it does not go far enough. Fair use is a vague, ad hoc, utilitarian legislative exception designed to blunt some of the edges of copyright law so as to help masque its manifest injustice. An analog would be a slavery law that permitted a judge to allow the slave a month of temporary freedom if he can demonstrate to the judge that his master has been mistreating him according to a balance test in which the judge weighs four "factors" to make this determination. Or an exception to tax law that says a judge can reduce your tax rate by 1% for one year, if you can persuade him of a "hardship" as proved by weighing four legislatively enshrined "factors." If the law is unjust and needs its edges blunted by ad hoc, unprincipled exceptions--the law itself is the problem and should be abolished.

This event is produced by the group Public Knowledge, which appears to be generally IP-skeptical ("Our first priority is promote innovation and the rights of consumers, while working to stop any bad legislation from passing that would slow technology innovation, shrink the public domain, or prevent fair use"; and they seem to be appropriately skeptical of the horrible DMCA), although their approach is somewhat ad hoc and unprincipled, and intermixed with the standard pro-democracy (and pro-Democrat), pro-"consumer," pro-network neutrality (see my A Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality) sentiments, and so on. Still, another ally in the fight against pattern privilege and intellectual monopoly.

[Mises, SK]

One of the problems is that science has become politicized. Industries hire hacks (including scientists) to attack any science that does not meet their needs. Think of the Chamber of Commerce's recent call for economists to write a paper that will attack health care.

Under constant attack, scientists may feel the need to "play defense." Just like a football team that keeps its practices secret to prevent opponents from learning their plans, scientists may well become insular.

In this way, industry destroys good science, which should depend on sharing of information.

Another failed attempt to suppress free speech using copyright law. Notice that this is only a partially failed attempt - if you read down to the bottom of the article, you will find that some ISPs caved to the DMCA notice.

No - not King's civil rights legacy, but rather the tragicomic copyright legacy which prevents others from hearing his words and has now reduced King's historical significance in today's news to a question of who controls the money generated by having his image on a T-shirt.

If such restrictions can be placed on King's words and image, then why couldn't they be placed on any other public figure including Presidents and other elected officials?

The implications for historical inquiry are staggering.

One thing that has always puzzled me is whether you can sign a contract agreeing to give up your fair use rights. My colleague David McGowan point to some legal opinions on the subject. The crude summary seems to be that contract law is state law, so hard to give a uniform rule, but that

I think it is fair to say that so far the federal cases interpreting state law have gone against finding copyright pre-emption of state contract law and have upheld contractual prohibitions on conduct that would qualify as fair use if done outside a contract: link here, link here.

He also refers to the ProCD opinion.

All of which raises the question: why isn't it more widespread? Why don't book and music publishers stick in a little fine print saying in effect "by purchasing this product I agree to give up all my fair use rights"?

With public libraries reeling under expanded budget cuts, Google's new deal with the publishers seems to threaten public libraries, which offer Internet service.

Karen Coyle's warning about Google's new plan is short enough that I need not summarize it. Google's response seems disingenuous.

Keep in mind that the major university libraries supplied books that were subsidized by public money.

Whatever happened to "do no harm"?

link here

In an op-ed, James Gibson castigates Google's deal with authors and publishers to pay for its right to scan their copyrighted books link here. Although Google had initially argued that scanning was fair use, it has now caved in to the copyright holders, apparently preferring to pay rather than litigate. Gibson argues that the deal gives Google a monopoly on scanning because no other companies will be in a position to scan library collections. He hopes the court will not agree to this anti-competitive deal.

Subsequently, Harvard's library which has a deal with Google to scan its books, is pulling out on books still under copyright, arguing that it went with Google initially because it expanded access to its collection link here.

It is depressing how copyright's power keeps getting extended and the monopoly, expanded.

And what has happened to "do no wrong"?