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The quote’s from this GigaOm story on Marvel and Cryptic’s new found mutal appreciation society. Marvel caused a bit of a stir a couple of years ago when it sued Cryptic Studios for copyright infringement because its superhero online game City of Heroes (they also do City of Villains) allowed users to customise their avatars so they were too similar to Marvel superhero franchises. Anyway, they settled and now, Cryptic have been hired by Marvel to create the “Marvel Universe Online” (you can now download a trailer). Shall be interesting to see how they manage to resolve the dilemma that not everyone can be Spiderman or Magneto (I imagine you can only have one of each character per server). The GigaOm mentioned the Star Wars Galaxies flop, but that actually had more potential in that playing a jedi is theoretically pretty cool in itself, you don’t have to be Luke Skywalker. Maybe the Marvel Universe Online will involve playing archetypes based on the original characters, so you can have spiderman’s powers but be able to tweak the costume, that could very well appeal. I’d play the demo anyway.

I like this one from PostSecret:

What I don’t like so much about them is their awful submission rules. Basically, you send them free content (your clever and charming postcards) and they won’t share it with it anyone. You are allowed to post ONE image as a link only, which is pretty stupid because it means that once you’ve linked to them once, you’re outrightly banned from giving them any further publicity (other than text links which are nowhere near as appealing), however much you might like a future postcard. They have made a book from it and I suppose plan future ones but it’s simple enough to attach a Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial license to it and then maybe it would feel a lot less like exploitation.

By submitting information to PostSecret, you grant PostSecret a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that information at its sole discretion, including storing it on PostSecret servers and incorporating it in other works in any media now known or later developed including without limitation published books.If you do not wish to grant PostSecret these rights, it is suggested that you do not submit information to this website. PostSecret reserves the right to select, edit and arrange submissions, and to remove information from the PostSecret website at any time at its sole discretion.

No image from this site may be used for any purpose without expressed written authorization, with one exception; you may post one image as a link to this site.

Well, at least the US economy if you believe the latest report funded by the US entertainment industry. Not content with previous estimations of $6billion in lost sales, they have now examined the “ripple effect” and found that:

movie piracy causes a total lost output for U.S. industries of $20.5 billion per year, thwarts the creation of about 140,000 jobs and accounts for more than $800 million in lost tax revenue.

Fortunately, Jason Shultz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (one of the major free use/digital rights activist organisations) was on hand to make the perfectly valid point that all because Hollywood doesn’t get the cash/jobs, doesn’t mean it gets taken away from the economy:

“In other words, let’s say people are forgoing paying for $6 billion in movies by downloading or consuming illegal goods but end up spending that $6 billion on iPods, computers and HDTV sets on which to watch the movies, which leads to $25 billion in job creation in the computer/software/consumer electronics field,”

But for the moment, it does look like US politicians are being taken in by Hollywood’s scaremongering.

It really does annoy me when people sue search engines and aggregators for copyright infringement, talk about biting the hand that feeds you. It’s hardly as if they are getting a free ride, I don’t want to even think about the many millions it costs to keep the Google servers going. Fact is, they provide an essential service and make the internet a much easier place to navigate.

Google in Tussle for Digital Rights

In early September, a Belgian court ruled that the search giant could not reproduce certain copyrighted titles and summaries on its Belgian Google News or Google.be Web site, throwing into question the entire concept of online news aggregation, and even search indexing… No question, portals and search engines funnel huge amounts of traffic to editorial Web sites. But there’s growing concern among publishers that they’re getting eyeballs but little or no revenue from news aggregators. At worst, their material is being expropriated and reproduced outright, with no return whatsoever to the copyright owner.

Maybe these publishers are jumping the gun a little soon, products such as Feedvertising (Text Link Ads) are now starting to provide the opportunity to monetise RSS feeds. Though it is depressing to think there are even more places for advertising to creep.

Not that I’m necessarily a huge fan of Google, I think you always have to be wary when a company is that big and powerful, however good its original start up philosophies might have been. There are a couple interesting posts on ZDNet (Google speak on copyright: content owners beware and Google: Web friend or Web foe) following on the above Belgian case and Google’s blogpost “Our Approach To Content”.

How did we get to a place where the debate on copying copyrighted materials is seen primarily from an owner’s infringement viewpoint? How did we get to a place where our ability to preserve our history and freedom of speech are actually at risk from intellectual property laws? In the latest round of copyright attrocities: Britain’s Sound Archives are finding that they are “facing the loss of a significant portion of its music collection due to stringent copyright laws and obsolete recording formats.” They have recordings that are decaying but the current laws do not allow copying for preservation. This has major implications for our ability to pass on our culture to future generations. It is ironic how a few years ago people were talking about being overloaded with information because everything was theoretically preservable, yet now we face the greatest losses of cultural works in history*, much due to intellectual property laws that were created (originally) to encourage the preservation and creation of works.

British music archive faces copyright risk

The British Library has been unable to begin transferring audio from obsolete formats to modern digital recordings because of prevailing copyright laws and that could ultimately end access to a portion of the archive`s collected recordings, the BBC reported. ‘Currently the law does not permit copying of sound and film items for preservation,’ said the British Library. ‘Without the right to make copies, the UK is losing a large part of its recorded culture.’

An article by ZDNet UK explores specifically the dangers of DRM raised by the British Library which, according to Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, “can impose restrictions on copying content that go beyond the requirements of copyright law” and “can’t be circumvented for disabled access or preservation, and the technology doesn’t expire (as traditional copyright does).” Suw Charman, executive director of the Open Rights Group, talked about the dangers of DRM to academic research:

“If we allow companies to create their own licenses, we undermine copyright law. If we say contract law is more important than copyright law, it allows publishers to write whatever license they like, which is what is happening now.”

In the ZDNet UK article, British Library also raised the problem of orphaned works, “There’s an enormous amount of material locked up because we can’t trace the copyright holders.” Which reminded me of the old US system of copyright law where you couldn’t get protection without registering with the national library actually had some value in that you could at least trace the copyright owners to ask their permission to use the work. I was once at a conference where James Boyle, a legal professor at Duke University (and the coolest legal academic ever) suggested an elegant system. All works were protected automatically for a set number of years, say 25, and then after that period, you could register your copyright for $1 to have another 25 or 100 or whatever years, if you don’t then it falls into public domain. His argument was that most of the lobbying for tightening up copyright laws are really due to a very small percentage of high earning works, but this is what is “locking up” all the other works which nobody wants and is not being saved because no one can find the original copyright owners.

*If only because we are creating the greatest numbers of cultural works in history.

[Edit: Boing Boing picked up the story: here is the Boing Boing story, Link to Counterpoint guide to Creative Commons IP rethink and Link to British Library report (pdf)]

Artist Reps Ask Japan Gov’t for Copyright Extension - International Business Times -

A group of 16 organizers for writers, artists, and musicians in Japan submitted a petition calling for legislation to extend the period of copyright protection from the current 50 years to 70 years after the death of right-holders, according to Japanese media. Masahiro Mita, Vice Chairman of the Japan Writer’s Association, said to Japanese media that artists in Japan must expect their copyrights to be protected for 70 years in the same way as those in Europe and United States. International law allows each country protect intellectual property based on its own laws. Works that are supposed to be protected for 70 years in their countries of origin can be copied and distributed in Japan after 50 years in current Japanese Law.

Once the US changed its laws from 50 years to 70 years after death, it is was inevitable that copyright owner organisations worldwide would demand the same, much like a game of dominos. When the USFTA proposed this extention of 20 years in Australia, it was unsurprising that the greatest pro lobbyists were representatives of copyright owners.

It shouldn’t make sense if the copyright owners were just real living people, after all what does an extra twenty years of protection mean when you’re already 50 years dead? Sure it might give some royalties to your great great great grandchildren instead of just your great great grandchildren, though the vast majority of creators would have stopped receiving royalties off their works while they were still alive. Surely this is a poor trade for losing 20 years of extra public domain material as inspiration in your new works? However, if you see companies as the main copyright owners then this starts to make a lot more sense. Companies never die, they just go out of business and their IP assets transferred, so 20 years of a successful licence (eg Mickey Mouse or Spiderman) is a lot of money. Unfortunately, while there are less companies than real living creators companies are a lot more savvy and powerful. They have done a good job in convincing the real living creators that their agendas are the same (see Sonny Bono or Metallica).

So when Leiji Matsumoto, both a creator of comics and the standing director of Japan Cartoonists Association said, “Japanese
cartoons are enjoyed and protected in all countries around the world. I
cannot stand on this unbalanced reality.” He should have been celebrating instead the fact that his country has an extra 20 years of culture that its comic writers and artists can weave into their stories without fearing copyright infringement notices.

Cory Doctorow, one of the founders of the hugely successful BoingBoing, is a legend. I’m just so glad that he’s consistantly putting himself and these issues on a public platform. Anyway, he’s some video of a recent speech he made:
NETRIBUTION - Cory Doctorow’s speech on copyright and successful media internet business models

His argument is simple - a business strategy which turns the majority of web users into criminals (39 out of 40 music downloaders according to the FT [Financial Times]) isn’t sustainable…. Beyond the activism part, is the issue about forming conversations between suppliers and consumers, about the democratisation of the media and how artists need to be successful in this context - which again comes right back to Cluetrain [also interesting reading, one article link, link to the cluetrain manifesto].

Meanwhile, Microsoft is off suing some poor hacker for cracking its crappy DRM AGAIN. The hacker’s program was called “FairUse4WM”. Here’s an article that sums up why DRM is bad and why Canadian and Australian plans to criminalise overriding it are really stupid: London Free Press - David Canton - DRM restricts our rights

You do have to wonder what’s behind this Sydney Morning Herald warning against third party brand inks: SMH: Photos fade with cheap ink . Is the bias merely from bad experience with one brand of inks?

Imaging can’t speak of Epson experience but we can report that third party inks wreaked havoc on the expensive printer heads of a Canon printer we owned. The heads clogged up and there was nothing we could do to clear them. When we checked with Canon they told us that use of third party inks does not void their warranty. They neither recommend nor warn. But our experience turned us off no-name inks forever.

The writer then goes on to reference a Wilhelm Imaging Research Institute (”the de facto standard for inkject print longevity”) study that gives “another persuasive reason for not using third party inks” because:

prints made with them quite literally fade before your eyes. The Wilhelm Imaging Research Institute - the de facto standard setter for inkjet print longevity - has recently tested a range of alternative inks from the big office supply companies in the US. The house brand names are unfamiliar to us but presumably these inks come from the same source that supplies our third-party market. Wilhelm found that where, for instance, Hewlett-Packard inks used with HP Premium Plus Photo Paper produce prints that last 73 years under standard illumination, the cheap inks faded in five months or, at the most, six years. HP 95 and 99 photo cartridges produce prints with a life expectancy of 108 years. With the cheap inks the life of a print is 4.6 years at best.

What do they mean by fading? I’ve always used standard inks and often standard paper from Canon and Epson and HP and I’ve seen fading in months and years, so I’m uninclined to trust figures that state 73 and 108 years. Do they mean that the pictures are totally gone in five months? I’d also find this hard to believe as I have a number of friends who only use third party inks and are still buying them years on which I doubt would be the case if they found all their printed data disappearing after months. There’s also no mention here that not everybody buys a printer to print digital photos. If all you are doing is printing out your documents for review and have no need for serious archival purposes then as long as the inks don’t ruin your printer then why do you need to pay a premium?

Even more questionable is the article’s statement that these American inks were “presumably the same source that supplies our [Australian] third-party market” Where’s that evidence? There are plenty of manufacturers, including local ones, so to state this is irresponsible. There are plenty of consumer studies done on locally sourced inks, I just saw one in an Australian computer magazine yesterday, why weren’t any of them referenced?

Canon, Epson and HP keep the formulations of their ink completely confidential so third party manufacturers have to do quite intensive testing to crack the code. Some do it better than others. The major printer manufacturers are now using intellectual property (eg copyright and patent) to try and stop this third party manufacture and again the consumer loses out as they are trapped into expensive refills that may not suit their needs:
Epson hits another third-party ink retailer
Third-party printer-ink row twist
Epson claims victory in third-party ink case
Epson gets online retailers to stop selling third-party ink cartridges for use in its printers

If that’s not scary enough, Lexmark is also attacking the consumer directly through contract, ie if you open the printer/cartridge box you agree to use their inks only and are not allowed to refill: The Latest IP Crime: “Box-Wrap” Patent Infringement. Brilliant!

World’s first hypo-allergenic cat | Video | Reuters.com

San Diego based company Allerca says it has successfully produced the world’s first hypoallergenic cat, something that could allow allergic pet lovers to enjoy cats again.

Unfortunately my laptop has decided to give up on its sound so no idea what’s being said in this video, the cats are cute. I’d be interested to see if there’s a patent in this, given that it’s being done by a company rather than a breeder. I wonder too whether there’s a trademark associated with it. Mind you, it’s not the world’s first hypo-allergenic cat, apparently the Russian Forrest Cat has incredibly low levels of allergens, likewise many Abyssinians possess low levels of allergy triggering proteins in their saliva.

[Edit: Just checked out the company Allerca’s website and, yes, their techniques are “patent pending” and you can only buy neutered cats (I doubt in the interests of overpopulation). You also cannot even choose the gender of your cat (due to “high demand”) nor the colour so out would be any of the personality matching of a responsible cat breeder (yes, cats do actually have different personalities). I guess the good news is if they haven’t keep some crucial part secret, the patent will be available in twenty or so years for anyone to use. They are taking votes for the next breed to de-allergenise. ]

A NY Restaurant called “Little Dishes” changed their name because another restaurant had the trademark “Dishes” (who allowed that one?). They were sued and couldn’t afford to fight it so they changed their name to “Little D Eatery”.
Boing Boing: Stupid trademark forces Brooklyn restaurant to be renamed