Dwell On It » Copyright

Copyright is for everybody

Tateru Nino — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:34:41 +0000

Copyright is an interesting beastie, and a very necessary one. Without Copyright law, most open source licences and Creative Commons licenses would be worthless. Copyright is enshrined in the United States constitution, offering a limited-time protection on works to everybody. That includes folks like you and me who don’t have works worth hundred of millions of dollars, and who might not have the ability to mount a lawsuit.

Copyright is for everybody, even if your means are scant and your works only commercially worth a few cents. That’s why the United States Copyright office wants to hear from you, as a part of a congressional enquiry into remedies for Copyright small claims.

Mighty lawsuits from little amendments grow

Tateru Nino — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 08:49:03 +0000

Historically, in the USA (and some other countries), clothing was exempt from the protections afforded by copyright as it was considered “an article of use”. Being that we’re bilaterally symmetrical bipeds, there’s not so many possibilities to create clothing that doesn’t strongly resemble other clothing. Actual clothing patterns could be copyrighted, as well as photographs and other images of clothing, but the basic designs themselves were exempt.

That all could suddenly change overnight now.

And the singularity goes to…

Tateru Nino — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 05:49:59 +0000

Well, privacy or copyright. If there’s to be a singularity in the next couple of decades or so, it’s most likely to be one of those.


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Third-party Second Life viewer developers call bullshit on Linden Lab GPL-violation claim

Tateru Nino — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 07:30:16 +0000

“[Linden Lab] has every right to refuse to list third-party software in [its] viewer directory or to bar third-party software from the grid, for [any reason not prohibited by law],” said one developer who declined to be named,”but suggesting [in this case] that third-party developers are violating [the GNU Public License and intellectual property rights] is just bullshit. [It’s] wrong and it’s defamatory.”

I’ve paraphrased that just a little, partly to tone the language down a touch.

And back we go to LLKDU, the extended Kakadu JPEG2000 library.


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Familiar faces

Tateru Nino — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:22:42 +0000

Snapped at the GP clinic today, because this has been bugging me for a while:

Can you even build a third-party viewer without violating the new licensing?

Tateru Nino — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:46:23 +0000

You know, I’m not sure that you can. The more I dig into this, the less I think so. Or at least, not without a whole heck of a lot more work.

Contribution agreements and copyright assignment

Tateru Nino — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:34:34 +0000

While I think of it, there are a couple of interesting quirks to copyright assignment agreements under USA law.

Piracy is a real problem

Tateru Nino — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:04:30 +0000

In recent years, the term ‘piracy’ has come to be applied to the unauthorized copying of music, movies and computer software. Oodles of sales are lost, we’re told, because of this kind of piracy.

That’s the third kind of piracy. Traditionally, there are two other kinds. The first, of course, is the ocean-going sort, but it’s the second kind of piracy that makes all the others pale into insignificance.

The humble trademark

Tateru Nino — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:10:36 +0000

Trademarks are poor misunderstood things.

Way back when, trademarks were called hallmarks, makers’ marks, earmarks and brands.

The property dichotomy

Tateru Nino — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:27:13 +0000

Intellectual property is a funny thing. That’s funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha – although I imagine that depends a little on your perspective.

You see intellectual property has an unfortunate name, because it isn’t actually property in the conventional sense and doesn’t conform to the same rules that govern other kinds of tangible or intangible property.


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The library dilemma

Tateru Nino — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:19:58 +0000

Public libraries – you know, if the library hadn’t already been developed (about 4,000 years ago, give or take), and you were proposing a public library system for books right now, you know what would happen?


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Performance that doesn’t perform

Tateru Nino — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:01:51 +0000

As distribution of music (and movies and television shows including music) go increasingly digital and becoming more and more widespread, composers and songwriters are getting less money, not more. Is this because of wholesale piracy?

No. It’s actually far more interesting than that.


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Poll: Eros vs Linden Lab – how do you think it will go?

Tateru Nino — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:57:58 +0000

I recently wrote two pieces on Eros LLC, Shannon Grei vs Linden Research Inc (AKA Linden Lab). One for Massively, and Read more ...

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How to become the richest person in the world

Tateru Nino — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:48:44 +0000

How do you become the richest person in the world in virtually no time at all?

Find a way to stop unauthorized copying of content.

Great free tools for Second Life content-creators

Tateru Nino — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:35:31 +0000

Content creation in Second Life sounds great, until you start looking at the price-tags on some of the pro software that’s commonly used to create it.

If you’re a content-creator who cares about creator-rights, you probably shouldn’t be using a bootleg copy of Photoshop (for example) to make your stuff. You can do better.

Here’s a short roundup of some great free tools that get the job done, do it well, won’t stress out your PC, and won’t blow your budget … on account of, you know, being free.

How do you spell gullible?

Tateru Nino — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:54:56 +0000

“!quit”

These ‘copyright protection’ devices are scattered all over Second Life. People are still actually buying them. At best this is like burying an iron knife under your threshold to keep witches away and then telling everyone who passes about it.

Third-party Second Life viewers

Tateru Nino — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:36:00 +0000

I’m looking forward to getting responses from the Lab’s PR people about – well, all sorts of things – but one in particular that I’m waiting on is more information about component licensing of the Second Life viewer.

The problem is that I’ve been planning a roundup and comparison of third-party viewers for a while (a frequently requested feature), but as near as I can tell, more than half of them constitute license/copyright infringement, some of it quite egregious.


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Plugging a hole that nothing is leaking through

Tateru Nino — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:47:21 +0000

The AACS Licensing Authority, the folks that license the DRM that goes onto high-definition Blu-ray media is closing up the analog hole, by putting a sunset clause in. After December 31, 2013, “no device that can decrypt AACS content can be made with any analog output whatsoever”.

Encrypted digital all the way, baby.

The problem is, nobody seems to be actually using the analog hole to copy content. Content pours out through the digital hole instead.


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What the heck is ‘the singularity’?

Tateru Nino — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:00:54 +0000

You’ll see the term a lot in tech-media lately. Talk about the technological singularity. But what actually is it?

And you thought pro writing was easy

Tateru Nino — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:56:36 +0000

Last week I met three people who didn’t know what copyright was. Oh, they’d all heard the word before, but one thought it was just the date of publication, and the other two? Well, they didn’t really think about it all that much.

Why is this exceptional? Because usually it’s only one or two.