I know that with everything going on here in the US it is hard to find the time to even think about other parts of the world, but the EU is currently losing its mind when it comes to copyright. If you have been following my blog here for some time, or read my book World After Capital, you know I think that copyright ought to be rolled back. Well the EU, is about to go in the opposite direction, massively expanding the obligations for online services to pre-clear rights before publishing anyth...

NOTE: I have been posting excerpts from my book World After Capital. Currently we are on the Informational Freedom section and the last week’s post was on being represented by a bot. Today looks at the rolling back copyright. Limiting the Limits to Sharing and CreatingOnce we have fought back geographical and prioritization limits and have bots in place so that all users can meaningfully control their own interactions with the global knowledge network, we still come up against limits that res...

Yesterday, the EFF filed an amicus brief signed by some of the big names in computer science and software engineering to support the court decision in Oracle vs. Google that APIs are not copyrightable. The brief is well worth reading because it lays out in detail many of the instances over the last decades in which the non-copyrightability of APIs has turned out to be important for innovation. I also support this view which is based on concept that functions or methods themselves are not copy...

Germany’s parliament today passed the highly controversial “Leistungsschutzrecht” which is an ancillary copyright that requires payment for excerpting from and linking to content in some instances. When I walked around in a slight daze at Chicago O'Hare this morning after an all too short red eye flight, my Twitter feed was full of German friends and others outraged about the bill (just look for #lsr). Jeff Jarvis – who spoke out strongly against the law at this year’s DLD conference – i...

One of the great sacred cows of the movie business has been the theatrical release window. First a movie is only in theatrical release. Then there may be a period where it is only on DVD. And finally it may be everywhere including various online options. Over the years the theatrical release window has compressed as described for instance in this 2009 Wharton piece. But it still exists and I believe is a major contributor to piracy. Maintaining a theatrical release window is really the perfec...

Since my post last Friday about alternatives to SOPA/PIPA, I have started to talk to a bunch of people about the idea of a decentralized content registry. Here are some thoughts and questions that I have been kicking around since then. A decentralized system could offer a new revenue stream for existing registrars and certificate authorities who are already at least partially equipped to deal with issues of verification. By having a competitive situation from the start the price for content r...

With SOPA and PIPA shelved at least for the moment, it is time to start thinking about alternatives. It would be a shame if we limited our collective thinking here to slightly different versions of those bills instead of exploring what a different approach to copyright could be that doesn’t try to fight the characteristics of the Internet but rather embraces them, providing value for rights creators/holders, technology companies and endusers. One interesting entry here is Ian Rogers (from Top...

Yesterday an international police operation resulted in the shutdown of MegaUpload and the arrest of at least four MegaUpload employees in Auckland, New Zealand. This action resulted in a large scale DDoS attack by the group known as Anonymous on web sites including the MPAA, RIAA, DoJ and even the White House. While I don’t have time today for a full scale analysis here are some salient point: 1. The fact that this shutdown and the arrests were possible shows quite clearly that existing laws...

The proposed PROTECT IP act is an improvement on COICA, but still makes the wrong trade-offs between protecting copyright holders and defending the integrity of the Internet. There are several major modifications from the COICA draft. The key ones are first that only the DOJ can initiate procedures against foreign web sites that would result in exclusion of these sites from DNS and second that for domestic websites the only type of injunctive relief available is financial (no advertising supp...

Yesterday, a judge granted YouTube’s Motion for Summary Judgment in the Viacom v. YouTube litigation. This is a major victory for all user generated content (UGC) companies because it strongly affirms the DMCA safe harbor. Congrats to David Drummond and the legal team at Google. Given that Google has been defending Internet freedom on a number of fronts it must feel good for them to score this victory. Great coverage can be found over at the EFF. With this decision it is even more important t...