Intellectual Property
revere | October 23, 2007Two weeks ago we reported getting an anonymous email from within the fetid bowels of the American Chemical Society. We weren't the only ones. Apparently it was also sent to college librarians, ACS administrators and a science writing listserv. Now it is making its way onto more conventional media (more conventional than this blog, anyway; but you heard it here first, by two weeks):
It said that the ACS is growing more corporate in structure and described how it manages the 36 chemical journals under its purview. Among other criticisms, the anonymous Emailer wrote that the bonuses given to ACS…
revere | October 12, 2007We've written before about the disgraceful behavior of the American Chemical Society regarding its attempts to scuttle Open Access publishing in taxpayer supported science (see also here and here). To recap, taxpayers have paid for research once through research grants, usually from the National Institutes of Health if it is health related research. Upon submission to a scientific journal published by a big for profit publisher or scholarly society (like the ACS) the author is asked to sign over the copyright to the journal, who then can charge again, through subscription or licensing fees.…
sb admin | October 11, 2007An hour or so ago I heard a story on NPR about California's new "Dead Celebrities" law. In a nutshell, it allows the heirs of a celebrity to control the use of that celebrity's image after said celebrity's death... even if at the time of the celebrity's death, the right to bequeath this power didn't exist.
I always find these sorts of stories depressing, because there is an important perspective that is lost. In the story, we hear that one side of the legal thinks it boils down to one simple question:
"How can a celebrity's legacy be protected, and who can do that?"
But he's wrong.…
revere | October 10, 2007I didn't think it possible, but the intellectual property nonsense promoted by the movie and record industries has reached new heights of lunacy. This is from the UK, but it could just as easily be the US:
A car repair firm has been taken to court accused of infringing musical copyright because its employees listen to radios at work.
The action against the Kwik-Fit Group has been brought by the Performing Rights Society which collects royalties for songwriters and performers.
At a procedural hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh a judge refused to dismiss the £200,000 damages claim.
[…
revere | September 27, 2007So the Harvard Coop fiasco goes into yet another day with lawyers at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society giving the book sellers (part of the Barnes and Noble College Division) a much needed lesson in copyright law. To recap (see also here and here), Harvard undergraduates running a comparison-shopping textbook service online were copying down course book ISBN numbers in the Harvard bookstore and were told to leave. On a second occasion The Coop (the name of the bookstore) called the cops, who, however, refused to intervene. The Coop's reasons were that the ISBN…
revere | September 24, 2007I thought the saga of The Harvard Coop would be over once the inanity of its claim that the ISBN numbers of books used in Harvard courses were their intellectual property. The ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a 13 digit number and barcode used by publishers to identify books uniquely. Harvard students were going to the text book section of the Coop (the original name of the Harvard Cooperative, later bought by the Barnes and Noble College Division), copying down the ISBN numbers and then making them available online via CrimsonReading.org, a service that automates comparison…
revere | September 22, 2007The Harvard Cooperative ("The Coop," pronounced like the coop in chicken coop) is a venerable institution whose main branch in Harvard Square is the principal retail outlet for textbooks to Harvard students. Generations have bought their texts and other books there. Like many college bookstores the old co-operative was bought out by a modern chain and the Harvard Coop is now a Barnes and Noble College Bookstore. The subsumption by a book retail giant some years ago was only one sign of a change in the book business, however. Now we have the internet which gives the modern cost conscious…
revere | August 30, 2007I don't suppose I can sue somebody for negligence resulting in impairment of my mental health. But if I could, I would surely go after the assholes at the PRISM coalition, an alleged grassroots group (such front groups for industry are often called astroturf groups) whose task in life is to lock up tax payer financed research under copyright laws they and their cronies wrote for their own benefit. And THEY ARE MAKING ME CRAZY! So there was at least some therapeutic benefit to the discovery of my SciBling Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily that these hypocrites were violating copyright on their…
sb admin | August 25, 2007DRM stands for "digital restrictions management". (Those who are in the business of peddling it as something positive will tell you it's "digital rights management," but the former is really a better descriptive name.) It is software that prevents you from using some other software or digital files on your computer unless you meet certain criteria.
DRM has actually been with us for a long time. Back in the 1980's, games and other software you could buy for your Apple II or Commodore 64 came with "copy protection." These were tricks that the software publishers would use to make it…
revere | August 25, 2007The Reveres and spouses are not big moviegoers, although when on vacation we do like to take in a flick. The movie Transformers is not likely to be the one we'd pick, but one thing for sure: whichever one it is won't be shown at one the theaters of the world's largest chain, Regal Entertainment Group. Not since they decided to go after a 19 year old young woman who filmed 20 seconds of Transformers at one of their theaters. She wanted to show it to her 13 year old brother to show him what it looked like. She subsequently pled guilty to a charge of unlawful recording of a movie:
The case is…
revere | August 1, 2007The intellectual property issues surrounding H5N1 and pandemic influenza in general continue to deepen and ramify into uncharted territory. Currently the usual suspects are meeting in Singapore to try to resolve issues that have arisen when some developing countries, led by Indonesia, have upset the international flu applecart by refusing to provide viral isolates to the WHO laboratory network, asserting that the practice of supplying "their" isolates to pharmaceutical companies who then make vaccines the originating country can't afford was inequitable and intolerable. I have waded into…
sb admin | July 24, 2007You may have heard about the amendment proposed to a Higher Education act by Harry Reid that would make colleges responsible for enforcing RIAA and MPAA policy. The text of the amendment is absolutely every bit as scary as the Inside Higher Ed article makes it sound. And, as one commenter (highlighted by Slashdot, even) notes, we shouldn't expect much sanity from the Democrats on this, because the government of the USA today is driven by the largest campaign donors, and of course the companies behind the music and movie industries are huge campaign donors to both parties. Indeed, the "…
sb admin | July 21, 2007Because, unlike what happens with copyright violation, students at Kansas University would at least be given due process and the right to a trial in which they could defend themselves if accused of murder.
Oh, and P.S., just like Josh's blog, if you're at KU and just read this, well, you're worse than a murderer, and under the rules of your University, your Internet access needs to be cut off. This page is, after all; under copyright. (For more info, see and click on the "Creative Commons" icon at the bottom of the left sidebar.)
Of course, if they abide by their rules, KU really out to…
revere | June 23, 2007Show mercy to Scooter Libby but not an illegal immigrant. Sue grandmothers and single parents of ten years olds but let rich twenty somethings admit piracy to a national newspaper with no one making a peep. Justice must have her blindfold off.
But I shouldn't have said no one has made a peep. We have to make an exception for Mitchell Silverman, Florida lawyer, keen-eyed reader, and fighter for equal justice under the law. Mr. Silverman, bless his heart, recognized the clear evidence of a theft right before his eyes -- in the newspaper:
President Bush unwrapped Father's Days gifts Sunday at…
revere | June 22, 2007This site has a Creative Commons license on it. Essentially this means anyone can copy, distribute or transmit my blog posts for whatever purpose they want -- even commercial purposes. The only restriction is that this unrestrictive license travels with the post. If you use something from us you must permit anyone else to take the same post from your site without asking permission; and to attribute it to us at Effect Measure (i.e., give us credit, ideally including a link back to this blog).
We think this is a good model for influenza viruses, too. Because without it we are headed for…
revere | May 28, 2007The thread that Indonesia pulled when it demanded certain rights to vaccines made from a seed virus isolated within its national borders is threatening to unravel the fabric of the half century seasonal influenza surveillance system. At the core of the dispute is the question of whether there is such a thing as an intellectual property right over a virus, a part of a virus or a viral gene:
During the recently concluded World Health Assembly - the annual meeting of the WHO's 193 member states - it became clear some countries are keen to explore whether they have intellectual property rights to…
sb admin | May 1, 2007Provocative title, eh? I expect many people to instinctively react as angrily to this as I do to the empty clause "intellectual property is property". However, the clause "copyright is censorship" is actually true.
What is copyright? It is a law passed by and enforced by governments that places restrictions on what you can say in public or what you can publish. It is a limitation on the freedom of expression.
In what way is that not censorship?
(I intend that as a rhetorical question. However, if you want to answer it, please try to come up with something better than "copyright is good,…
sb admin | May 1, 2007Scientific papers, like all other sorts of writing or creative expression, are covered by copyright. And, this is potentially a very bad thing.
Copyright grants a lot of sweeping rights to the writers of a paper, or the producers of any creative work. Often, those rights get signed away to a publisher or a distributor, but they are still there and enforceable by law. Among those rights is the right the term "copyright" is named after: the right to make copies of the work, but more significantly, the right to prevent anybody else from making a copy. There's another right that goes even…
sb admin | April 30, 2007One of my pet peeves is when, in an attempt to help convey to others the seriousness of respecting copyrights, patents, and trademarks, somebody says, "Intellectual property is property!" This is often followed by an emotional appeal that just as you would hesitate before breaking into somebody's house and stealing their TV, you should also hesitate before passing on a digital file.
Often, people then respond, "but if I take the TV, you don't have it any more. If I copy a digital file, you still have the digital file!"
I have very rarely, if ever, seen a considered counter to that response…
sb admin | April 26, 2007I guess we should excuse Wiley now, because they've backed down from pointing their lawyers at Shelly
Potential cynic that I am, I have several residual thoughts on the issue.
Thought #1: I really want to believe what was in the apology letter sent to Shelly: it was a misunderstanding inadvertently caused by a junior member of the staff. I want to believe that had it been calmly brought to the attention of the Director of Publications by a single person (say, Shelley), that an apology letter would have been generated. But I'm having a hard time believing that. Perhaps I'm being unfair to…