Digital Copyright

Taking the Copyfight Online: Comparing the Copyright Debate in Congressional Hearings, in Newspapers, and on the Web

by Bill Herman

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
Volume 17, Issue 3, pages 354–368, April 2012

This article examines the rhetoric around copyright and the regulation of digital rights management (DRM) from 2003 to... more This article examines the rhetoric around copyright and the regulation of digital rights management (DRM) from 2003 to 2006 in congressional hearings, in major newspapers, and on the most prominent relevant websites. The article describes a new combination of methods for identifying a set of online documents to compare with offline documents via content analysis. These three media present very different views of the copyright debate. Hearings present a rough balance of both coalitions' messages. Newspapers lean slightly toward stronger fair use but have little coverage. The online debate features a deluge of strong fair use arguments. These findings highlight different communication strategies and suggest broader lessons about the changing nature of policy advocacy and the policymaking process.

A Balance of Benefits and Burdens: Academia in a Digital Copyright Context

by Carol Mohrbacher

Review : Quand Google Défie Le Droit - Alain Strowel (2011)

by Maxime Lambrecht

Auteurs & Media, 6/2011, p. 605

Dans son dernier livre, Alain Strowel analyse les enjeux juridiques autour des services en ligne proposés par Google.... more Dans son dernier livre, Alain Strowel analyse les enjeux juridiques autour des services en ligne proposés par Google. La thèse principale du livre est que lorsqu'un acteur aussi incoutournable que Google défie le droit, il participe à l'écriture du droit de l'Internet. Les innovations introduites par le géant américain ont souvent suscité d'intéressants développements dans la jurisprudence, qui servent de fil rouge au propos de l'auteur.

Après avoir résumé les principaux chapitres, nous ferons un commentaire critique sur un ouvrage couvrant de manière pédagogique et stimulante une large palette de thématiques du régime juridique des droits intellectuels dans l'environnement numérique.

Internet time: Open Data and Laws for European citizens

by Carlo Vaccari

Co-authored with M.C. De Vivo, A. Polzonetti e P. Tapanelli
Presented at EIRP 2012, will be published in EIRP Proceedings

The article covers three different aspects related to the Internet usage in Europe. The first theme examines the Open... more The article covers three different aspects related to the Internet usage in Europe. The first theme examines the Open Data phenomenon and the use of Public Sector Information in the interest of the citizens. In this part we listed the studies that in last years attempted to quantify the PSI market. In the second paragraph we list the actions taken by European Commission to develop the PSI market and to use the “openness” to improve economic growth in Europe. In the final section an overview of the Italian law relating to the use of the Internet is given, connecting it with the latest developments of European and UN laws on the usefulness of new technologies for the European digital citizen. The paper provides an overall look at the studies, actions and European laws regarding the use of the Internet and public data and the resulting benefits for citizens.

Ethics Reconfigured: How Today's Media Consumers Evaluate the Role of Creative Reappropriation

by Aram Sinnreich

Published in "Information, Communication & Society," 2009. Coauthored with Mark Latonero and Marissa Gluck.

In recent years, ‘configurable’ technologies such as the Internet-connected PC, cheap and accessible media-editing... more In recent years, ‘configurable’ technologies such as the Internet-connected PC, cheap and accessible media-editing software, and writeable media drives have enabled a profound shift in the agency of media consumers, opening up a vast grey area between traditional production and consumption. This shift has given rise to a host of new media practices and products, such as mash-ups, remixes, mods, and machinima. However, the cultural discourse about media practices are still mired in the ‘black and white’ ethics of the twentieth century media distribution, evidenced by ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’ debates. In this paper, we examine the self-reported attitudes of nearly 1,800 American adults and draw on the personal interviews with dozens of configurable music practitioners to discover what a new, and more appropriate, ethical discourse of configurability might look like. Data suggest that the new practices of cultural appropriation are both reaffirming and challenging the age- old evaluative criteria.

ACCESSO ALLA CONOSCENZA, FAIR USE E DIRITTO D’AUTORE: IL CASO GOOGLE BOOKS

by Giovanni Maria Riccio

Google Books è un sistema di digitalizzazione delle opere letterarie, lanciato dall’operatore statunitense nel 2002.... more Google Books è un sistema di digitalizzazione delle opere letterarie, lanciato dall’operatore statunitense nel 2002. Nel settembre 2005, Google è stata destinataria di una class action dinanzi al Southern District of New York, lanciata da The Authors Guild, nella quale era accusata di aver commesso, per mezzo del servizio di libri, un “massive copyright infringement”. Le controversie sono state risolte per mezzo di una transazione, che ha sollevato più di un dubbio, sia sotto il profilo della tutela degli autori sia del rispetto delle regole di concorrenza.
Successivamente, Google Books è stata chiamata in giudizio, per presunte violazioni del diritto d’autore, anche in Francia e condannata Tribunal de Grande Instance di Parigi per riproduzione integrale o parziale di opere protette, senza il consenso dell’autore. Altre liti giudiziarie sono sorte anche in altri ordinamenti, come Cina e Germania.
L’intervento si ripropone di analizzare, in chiave comparatistica, i precedenti giudiziari che hanno interessato la società americana e l’applicabilità della doctrine del fair use alla fattispecie. Inoltre, verrà sviluppato il tema dell’accesso alla conoscenza ed il complesso contemperamento tra titolari dei diritti d’autore e interessi collettivi.

The private copy issue: piracy, copyright and consumers’ rights.

by Pedro Pina

In Strader, Troy (Coord.), Digital Product Management, Technology and Practice: lnterdisciplinary Perspectives, 161 Global, 2011, pp. 193-205

Digital copyrights involve a combination of technology and law that seek to provide full control of the work by the... more Digital copyrights involve a combination of technology and law that seek to provide full control of the work by the rightholder. Managing rights over digital copyrighted contents through the use of consumers’ technological protection measures may however jeopardize some freedoms that copyright law has traditionally recognized, such as the private copy. In the present chapter, the author describes the conflict between the exclusive right to the exploitation of the work and the private copy issue; how modern copyright obstructs private copying and recent proposals regarding the conciliation between rightholders’ and consumers’ interests.

Electronic Surveillance, Privacy and Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights: A Digital Panopticon?

by Pedro Pina

In Cruz-Cunha e Varajão (eds), Innovations in SMEs and conducting e-business: technologies, trends and solutions, , IGI Global, ISBN 978-1-60960-765-4, 2011, pp. 301-316

In cyberworld, intellectual property rights and the right to informational self determination have become two... more In cyberworld, intellectual property rights and the right to informational self determination have become two realities in tension. Nevertheless, they are two main concerns of the e-commerce stakeholders. Fromthe industry point of view, new digital technologies, left unregulated, may allow a free flow of information and unauthorized access to contents both from consumers or competitors; from the consumers’ perspective, security and privacy concerns are the major barriers to contracting on-line. The goal of the present chapter is to understand the relationship between anti-piracy oriented private electronic surveillance and consumers’ privacy. If, on the one hand, the enforcement of intellectual property is a laudable activity – since the recognition of economic exclusive rights is an incentive to artistic or scientific creation and the protection of the investments is an ICT industry’s legitimate interest –, on the other hand, the individual’s privacy sphere is one of the most important values and personal freedoms that law, including intellectual property law, must preserve.

Digital Copyright Enforcement: Between Piracy and Privacy

by Pedro Pina

In Akrivopoulou e Psygkas (eds.), Personal Data Privacy and Protection in a Surveillance Era: Technologies and Practices, IGI Global, ISBN13: 9781609600839, 2011, pp. 241-254

Copyright and privacy are two fundamental values for a democratic society, since both enhance the development of each... more Copyright and privacy are two fundamental values for a democratic society, since both enhance the development of each individual’s personality. Nevertheless, in cyberspace, copyright enforcement and the right to informational self determination have become two clashing realities. In fact, with the arrival of digital technology, especially the Internet, rightholders, facing massive on-line copyright infringements, mainly by file-sharers on peer-to-peer (P2P) systems, started developing more and more intrusive
new enforcement strategies in electronic communications as a means to identify the infringers and the committed infractions. The goal of the present paper is to study, in a context where massive unauthorized uses of copyrighted works is an undeniable reality, how the boundaries between what is public or private become fainter, whether the use of tracking softw re is consistent with personal data protection legislation, and whether it is possible to reconcile these two human rights.

Computer Games and Intellectual Property Law: Derivative Works, Copyright and Copyleft

by Pedro Pina

In Cruz-Cunha et al (eds.), Business, technological, and social dimensions of computer games:multidisciplinary developments, IGI Global, ISBN 978-1-60960-567-4, 2011, pp. 464-475

Digital technology has been stressing copyright traditional balance between rightholders’ and users’ interests. In... more Digital technology has been stressing copyright traditional balance between rightholders’ and users’ interests. In fact, it allows the move from a mere passive consumption role to a player-as-producer model that potentiates the creation of user-generated transformative uses.
Since, traditionally, copyright reserves full control over derivative works to the author of the original work, that branch of law may be (mis)used a tool for controlling users speech.
In the present chapter, the author briefly studies the particular tension between the current copyright paradigm, based on the dichotomy active creator – passive consumer, and the control over creative transformative usages of digital works in the field of computer games, such as mods or add-ons, and exposes some reactions that go from voluntary licensing schemes, such as copyleft licenses, to compulsory licenses.

Portfolio: ON THE RIGHTS OF MOLOTOV MAN: Appropriation and the art of context

by Joy Garnett

Harper's February 2007
PORTFOLIO: [pp.53-58]

On the Rights of Molotov Man:
Appropriation and the art of context
By Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas

Joy Garnett is a painter and the arts editor of the journal Cultural Politics. Susan Meiselas is a photographer best... more Joy Garnett is a painter and the arts editor of the journal Cultural Politics. Susan Meiselas is a photographer best known for her documentation of human-rights issues in Latin America. Both artists live in New York City, and their work has appeared previously in Harper's Magazine. This portfolio is drawn from their conversation at the New York Institute for the Humanities' "Comedies of Fair U$e" symposium, which took place in Spring 2006 at New York University.

Where Does the Anti-SOPA Movement Go Next?

by Alex Sayf Cummings

This piece suggests that the remarkable surge of activism against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) represents a major... more This piece suggests that the remarkable surge of activism against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) represents a major shift in the longer term debate about copyright in the US. An anti-copyright movement that began among a small group of academics and activists in the 1990s now commands a broad, if shallow, base of public support for the first time. The piece draws on the work of pioneering copyright skeptics such as Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle, who drew an analogy between anti-copyright politics and the environmentalist movement to urge a reframing of the public domain as an issue of broad public concern. It shows how such ideas have increasingly resonated with a wider audience in the struggle over property rights and sharing on the Internet.

Világháló a jog hálójában

by Akos Kohidi

http://copyrightinthexxicentury.blogspot.com/2011/12/cikkajanlo-6-vilaghalo-jog-halojaban.html

A felhasználók által fájlmegosztással okozott kár

by Akos Kohidi

http://copyrightinthexxicentury.blogspot.com/2012/01/cikkajanlo-8-fajlmegosztassal-okozott.html

Diritto d’autore e aggregatori di notizie online: spunti dal caso Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali vs. Google News Italia

by Francesco Di Tano

Il rapporto tra il diritto d’autore e Internet, sin dalla sua origine, è sempre stato piuttosto controverso,
in... more Il rapporto tra il diritto d’autore e Internet, sin dalla sua origine, è sempre stato piuttosto controverso,
in quanto connotato da istanze necessariamente opposte: da una parte, l’esigenza tutela delle creazioni
dei relativi autori, dall’altra, la libertà di manifestazione del pensiero e, soprattutto, di libera circolazione
dello stesso. Più di recente, in Italia e non solo, si è sviluppata un’aspra contrapposizione tra le società
rappresentative degli editori di giornali e i soggetti esercenti, in rete, le attività di aggregazione di notizie,
colpevoli, a detta delle prime, di infrangere i diritti di utilizzazione economica degli articoli dei giornali
pubblicati online. Il presente articolo prende in esame la vicenda che ha coinvolto, dinanzi all’Autorità
per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, la Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali e Google Inc., con
riferimento specifico al servizio Google News, e, successivamente, passa in rassegna la giurisprudenza
che, in ambito europeo, ha già affrontato analoghe fattispecie. Ciò, al fine di addivenire ad una
soluzione che possa conciliare, nel nostro ordinamento nazionale, tale fenomeno con la disciplina del
diritto d’autore, sia nell’attuale contesto normativo, sia – ancor meglio – in una prospettiva de lege ferenda,
volta all’introduzione di una regolamentazione più attenta alle aspirazioni libertarie proprie del web (2.0).

Copyright, Electronic Regulation of Performance and Mass-market License

by Tianxiang He

Published in 'Journal of Jinan University, September 1, 2011'.

As a positive respond to the challenges of the digital age, UCITA as a legislative achievement has profound... more As a positive respond to the challenges of the digital age, UCITA as a legislative achievement has profound theoretical and actual value. With its "market dichotomy" and mass-market license, electronic regulation of performance and electronic self-help regime, it is actually trying to build a set of license regime which advocate "Price Discrimination Scheme" and the combination of the license contract and electronic regulation measures, to achieve the state of efficiency maximum. But this kind of theoretical efficiency maximum may conflict with the final objective of the Intellectual Property Law. Thus, in the progress of building China's copyright license regime and rebuilding our Intellectual Property Law, we should consider our national intellectual property strategy in a macroscopic perspective and perfect our fair use regime, then leave due space for the balance between copyright interests and public interests.

North American Digital Copyright, Regional Governance and the Potential for Variation

by Blayne Haggart

Dissertation, approved May 2011

This dissertation proposes an historical-institutionalist framework for understanding regional governance issues in... more This dissertation proposes an historical-institutionalist framework for understanding regional governance issues in general and North American governance in particular. Using digital-copyright reform as a test issue, it demonstrates that regional institutionalization can preserve differences and does not necessarily lead to regional policy convergence. This conclusion emerges from historical institutionalism’s focus on understanding the interaction of the policy-relevant ideas, institutions and interests shaping a region, no matter on what “level” they may be located. Regional governance processes must be understood within their own particular historical contexts. This approach allows the researcher to account for relevant influences that are either downplayed or ignored in other approaches to regionalism.

With respect to copyright, this dissertation finds that U.S. digital-copyright policy is shaped decisively by its own domestic ideas, institutions and interests, with international and regional factors playing a minimal role. For Canada and Mexico, while the United States has attempted to influence copyright reform in its neighbours, both countries’ copyright policies continue to be influenced significantly by domestic factors, and both countries continue to display significant copyright-policy autonomy. U.S. ability to influence its neighbours is constrained by the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) guarantee of market access, which limits the U.S. ability to link copyright reform to improved access to its market, suggesting that NAFTA’s rules play a role in maintaining policy autonomy and reducing the potential for policy convergence.

Characterizing Digital Media Exchanges in a University Campus Network

by Alexandre Mateus

Co-authored with Jon Peha, presented at TPRC 2009

This article presents findings from a large-scale quantitative assessment of online exchanges of copyrighted material... more This article presents findings from a large-scale quantitative assessment of online exchanges of copyrighted material on a college campus based on network data collected using deep packet inspection (DPI). We find that use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) for the transfer of copyrighted content is widespread on campus, although observed P2P is declining. In a month-long monitoring period in Spring 2008, at least 40% of students living on campus were observed engaging in P2P, 70% of those were detected attempting to transfer copyrighted content, and each of the latter was observed transferring copyrighted titles at an average rate of 4 titles per day. Nevertheless, from Spring 2007 to Spring 2008, the daily percentage of detected P2P users fell 10%, and the daily percentage of users observed attempting to transfer copyrighted content out of those detected doing P2P fell 20%. These changes could be the result of decreasing use of P2P, or increasing use of encrypted P2P to evade detection. We also find that, given a couple weeks or more, current DPI technology identifies most users attempting to transfer copyrighted material, out of users whose P2P traffic it can detect. This shows that even if DPI does not detect every transfer of copyrighted material, it can effectively identify individuals who make these transfers, provided they do not use encryption. However, detection of copyrighted content is less accurate for video than for audio, so it may take far longer to identify individuals who use P2P to transfer copyrighted video but not copyrighted audio. Finally, to shed light on the impact of P2P on sales of content, we find that 22% of P2P users also purchase content from the iTunes Store (iTS), each buying on average about as much content as non- P2P users who purchase from the iTunes Store. This refutes the hypothesis that all P2P users view the ability to obtain free content from P2P as a complete substitute for paying for content. On the other hand, we also find that among iTs users, those who use P2P are somewhat more likely than those do not use P2P to access iTs only for the free samples.

The Digital Economy Act 2010: A Cause for Celebration, or a Cause for Concern?

by Benjamin Farrand

The Case that Never Was: An Analysis of the Apple iTunes Case Presented by the Commission and Potential Future Issues

by Benjamin Farrand