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Malamud to propose an Edicts of Government Amendment
[UPDATE 1/14/14: the hearing including Carl Malamud’s testimony is now available vis CSPAN. JRJ] Carl Malamud will be testifying at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Scope of Copyright Protection On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at 10AM. Hi testimony will be on the subject of Edicts of Government, including copyright assertions over state laws and federally-mandated public […]
Georgia Claims Its Annotated Laws Are Covered By Copyright, Threatens Carl Malamud For Publishing The Law
Georgia Claims Its Annotated Laws Are Covered By Copyright, Threatens Carl Malamud For Publishing The Law, by Mike Masnick, techdirt (Jul 30, 2013). Masnick notes that, technically, states that claim to be able to copyright their laws are on reasonably firm legal ground, even if they're on completely illogical common sense ground but that fact "doesn't make it any saner to claim such a copyright." Among other things, Georgia claims (apparently as a justification) that the unannotated Georgia Code is available to the public at no charge at www.legis.ga.gov. Masnick continues:
It's not as if the state needed the "incentive" of copyright to publish an annotated version of the law. If anything, this seems like copyright misuse. But, even beyond that, it just seems counterproductive from a public policy standpoint to want to make your own laws harder to understand.Continue reading
Lunchtime Listen: A history of intellectual property
Here is an entertaining and informative 52 minute podcast that gives an historical overview of patents and copyright and other "intellectual property" issues from an American perspective. Although they do not discuss government information issues specifically, the history they do discuss provides the context for the public good of public information and the attempts to privatize or commodify public information. This is definitely informative, but The American History Guys of Backstory (Ed Ayers, Peter Onuf, and Brian Balogh) are more like the Car Guys than your high school history teacher. They discuss everyone from Mark Twain to Phyllis Diller and guests include Ananda Chakrabarty, University of Illinois College of Medicine, Kembrew McLeod, University of Iowa, Doron Ben-Atar, Fordham University. Siva Vaidhyanathan, University of Virginia, and Chris Sprigman, University of Virginia School of Law. Listen and enjoy.
- Patent Pending: A History of Intellectual Property, The American History Guys, Backstory (May 20, 2013). Can genes be patented? Are downloaders inhibiting musical creativity -- or enhancing it? This week's BackStory explores how Americans have viewed "intellectual property" over time. What exactly is intellectual property? And what are protections for these kinds of rights supposed to achieve? The American History Guys look to the past for answers.
- Download the mp3 file.
- Subscribe to the Backstory podcast.
US government sends itself a takedown notice
As you may know, works of the U.S. Government are not protected by copyright in the U.S. (17 USC §105), but we often discover copyrighted government publications that one would reasonably think would be in the public domain and, more recently, we see works that were treated as public domain in print suddenly being treated as copyrighted when they are converted to digital. No matter how clear the law is, this can lead to confusing situations. Take the case of a movie produced by the United States Information Agency. USIA was was prohibited by law from distributing films in the United States, but a Congressional Resolution did authorize USIA to sell six master copies of the film to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Then Carl Malamud obtained a copy of a video tape of the movie from NTIS, digitized it, and posted it at the Internet Archive. Now the Kennedy Center is claiming that the film is copyrighted and that the Center has exclusive rights for distribution and NTIS has requested that Malamud take down the digital copy he created. The Resolution (Congressional Record, August 26, 1965, p.21256) says:
Accordingly, the United States Information Agency is authorized to make appropriate arrangements to transfer to the trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts six master copies of such film and the exclusive rights to distribute copies thereof, through educational and commercial media, for viewing within the United States. The net proceeds resulting from any such distribution shall be covered into the Treasury for the benefit of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.The film begins with a notice (at 00:00:25) that says the film "is presented in the United States by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington DC, in accordance with a resolution of the Congress." It ends (at 1:26:08) with what looks like a copyright notice (it is hard to read in the digital version) that (I think) says "Copyright 1964 by the National Center for the Performing Arts, All rights reserved." I assume that these were added by the Center to the original film. What will Malamud do? He asks you to advise him:
One agency of the federal government has issued a takedown notice to another agency of the federal government, which in turn demanded that we remove a film from the Internet. Not knowing what to do, I have appealed for your help. I hereby bring this plea before the Court of Appeals for Wonderful Things, appealing to a jury of my peers, all happy mutants, for their verdict.Read the complete story here:
- US government sends itself a takedown notice over JFK documentary: you decide what to do!, posted by Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing (Apr 26, 2013).
- John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning/Day of Drums (1964), United States Information Service, AVA11312VNB1, 1964. (Run time: 1h 26' 18") The program dramatizes the thousand days of John F. Kennedy's presidency, from his inauguration in 1961 to his tragic death on November 22, 1963. The videotape emphasizes Kennedy's and America's hopes for his term as president. Uploaded by Public.Resource.Org under Joint Venture NTIS-1832 with the National Technical Information Service.
Happy New Year 2013! What Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2013?
Happy 2013 FGI readers! As we begin the new year, it's always good to be reminded every year by Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle and rest of the fine folks at the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain about the number of books, film and music that could have entered the public domain this year were it not for the 1976 Copyright Act. It's a fascinating and depressing read, especially the scientific material that may never become truly free and open knowledge -- not to mention the Scifi ("Minority Report" and Around The World in 80 Days -- the movie -- should have been "Around The World in 34,699 Days"), music, films, and literature.
Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years – an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1956 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2013, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2052. And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. What books would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles below. * Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume I and Volume II * Philip K. Dick, Minority Report * Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever * Fred Gibson, Old Yeller * Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues * Alan Lerner, My Fair Lady * Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night * John Osborne, Look Back in Anger * Dodie Smith, 101 Dalmatians Here are a few of the movies that we won’t see in the public domain for another 39 years. * Around the World in 80 Days * The Best Things in Life are Free * Forbidden Planet * Godzilla, King of the Monsters! * It Conquered the World * The King and I * The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 remake by Alfred Hitchcock of his 1934 British film) * Moby Dick * The Searchers (1956 film version with John Wayne from Alan Le May’s 1954 novel) * The Ten Commandments (1956 version by Cecil B. DeMille, who also directed a similar film in 1923)[HT BoingBoing!] Continue reading
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