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Study: Fair Use Was Worth $4.5 Trillion to U.S. Economy
If someone accuses you of copyright infringement, you can defend the charges by proving that your activity is covered by Section 107 of the Copyright Act, which provides some protection from allegations of copyright infringement “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.”
Defenders of fair use are sometimes painted as anti-business, because they generally believe in shorter copyright terms and other measures designed to revert intellectual property into the public domain after it has been exploited by its original owner (this span has been lengthened periodically by what’s known as the “Mickey Mouse law”).
But according to a study (PDF) released last week by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) using methodology devised by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the “fair use economy” generated over $4.5 trillion last year, representing about one sixth of the entire US gross domestic product for 2006 and employing millions of Americans.
And as luck would have it, TruthHappens.com is featuring a series of interviews with the very same Mark Webbink, Red Hat’s former General Counsel, over the next few weeks.
Loads of insight and straight talk about the legal issues that impact those who make and use free software.
Check back for updates, and once the series runs we’ll archive it for further study.
Groklaw - Mark Webbink Joins Board of Software Freedom Law Center
Distinguished Free Software Lawyer to Advise Nonprofit Law Firm
The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), today announced that Mark Webbink has joined its board of directors.Webbink comes to SFLC from Red Hat, the premiere Linux and open source vendor, where he served as its first general counsel beginning in 2000. In 2004, he became Red Hat’s deputy general counsel for intellectual property, a position he served in until his retirement in August 2007. During his tenure with Red Hat, Webbink wrote and spoke extensively on the subjects of open source software, software patents, and patent reform.
Webbink is a Senior Lecturing Fellow with the Duke University School of Law and consults with open source companies on their business strategies. He holds a BA from Purdue University as well as a Master of Public Administration and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“During my time at Red Hat, I came to understand that open source developers perform their best work when sound legal advice is available to them,” said Webbink. “I look forward to working with an organization that provides this essential role to the Free and Open Source Software community.”
“Mark brings his exceptional experience and knowledge of FOSS licensing and the enterprise marketplace to the SFLC at a critical time in the software industry,” said Eben Moglen, founding director of SFLC. “I am grateful to Mark for putting his wisdom at the service of our clients, for the good of everyone who makes, distributes or uses free software.”
Webbink will be introduced at SFLC’s first annual Legal Summit for Software Freedom at Columbia Law School in New York on Friday, October 12th.
BBC NEWS | Scotland | Edinburgh, East and Fife | Kwik-Fit sued over staff radios
The PRS claimed that Kwik-Fit mechanics routinely use personal radios while working at service centres across the UK and that music, protected by copyright, could be heard by colleagues and customers.
It is maintained that amounts to the “playing” or “performance” of the music in public and renders the firm guilty of infringing copyright.
Red Hat loses a General Counsel, Duke gains a law professor, the world gets a new blogger, and Truth Happens gets an interview.
Download this video: [Ogg Theora]
Longer segments will be posted over the next few weeks dealing with everything from Red Hat business history to the philosophical underpinnings of IP issues, all from a lawyer who has been on the front lines of the FLOSS movement during very interesting times.
Check back for new installments every Friday.
Only the ©reme de la ©reme make it onto the © team.
Coming soon to kindergarten class: antipiracy ed | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
“In the 15- to 24-year-old (range), reaching that demographic with morality-based messages is an impossible proposition…which is why we have really focused our efforts on elementary school children,” said Ric Hirsch, the ESA’s senior vice president of intellectual property enforcement. “At those ages, children are open to receiving messages, guidelines, rules of the road, if you will, with respect to intellectual property.”
The ESA has gone so far as to develop a copyright education curriculum geared toward the kindergarten through fifth-grade set. Since 2005, the organization has been trying to find ways to get teachers to incorporate its tenets into their everyday lessons, although Hirsch did not say how successful that effort has been. The components, which include charts, teachers guides, lesson plans and a wall poster imploring students to “Join the © Team,” are also now available online.
Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Music has posted both a great presentation and a great promise:
If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I’ll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
Go read this great summary of the last eight years of digital music and Rogers’ vision for the music industry’s future.
From Danish TV, DR2 Deadline News, Oct. 4th 2007.
More at the Lessig Blog.
RIAA trial verdict is in: jury finds Thomas liable for infringement
The first case has gone to trial, and the verdict is in. The music labels now have a notch on their belt, while a woman who spent thousands of dollars on their product is now faced with a large judgment.
The RIAA hopes that this and the 20,000 other cases serve as a deterrent to would-be file-sharers, but the question of whether or not the music industry is engendering so much hostility and bad press with its campaign that it outweighs any short-term benefits remains. With a verdict in their favor, the RIAA hopes to ratchet the campaign of fear up a notch and says it will press forward with its legal campaign.
Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience - New York Times
The truth is, the XO laptop, now in final testing, is absolutely amazing, and in my limited tests, a total kid magnet. Both the hardware and the software exhibit breakthrough after breakthrough — some of them not available on any other laptop, for $400 or $4,000.
[snip]
But the XO deserves to overcome those fears. Despite all the obstacles and doubters, O.L.P.C. has come up with a laptop that’s tough and simple enough for hot, humid, dusty locales; cool enough to keep young minds engaged, both at school and at home; and open, flexible and collaborative enough to support a million different teaching and learning styles.
It’s a technological breakthrough, for sure. Now let’s just hope it breaks through the human barriers.
It has to be one of the foundations of the jury system that a jury is capable of understanding facts and law, and to know a crime when they see it. You might say that’s the essence of the system, and it counts on the ability of a group of citizens to determine when a harm is doen to society requiring correction. Bringing in a witness “to draw the jury’s attention to ‘the massive problem of file sharing’ seems a little like trying too hard.
If you can’t blame them for trying, you can at least laugh at them for trying too hard.
Judge bars RIAA president from testifying in Capitol Records v. Thomas
After a brief recess this afternoon, plaintiffs’ counsel Richard Gabriel and defendant’s counsel Brian Toder made their cases before the judge as to the relevance of Sherman’s testimony. Toder argued that Sherman’s testimony was not relevant to the question at hand, the fact of whether Thomas was liable for copyright infringement. Gabriel said that Sherman would be able to tell the jury why this case was significant and, more importantly, describe the harm the RIAA believes piracy has caused to the music industry.
“I don’t want to turn this case into a soap box for the recording industry,” Toder argued in response.
After Judge Davis initially struck Sherman from the witness list, Gabriel continued pressing his case, saying that Sherman would be able to draw the jury’s attention to “the massive problem of file sharing” and testify that the RIAA is “not out to get millions in damages, but to prove a point.” With the judge refusing to reconsider his motion barring Sherman testifying, the case wrapped up with witnesses from UMG, Warner Bros., and EMI Records North America, all of whom testified that the record labels did indeed own the copyrights to the recordings in question.
Quicktime | Real
Real Stream | Ogg Theora
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