Category Archives: Internet

Moving beyond DRM

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Have you been counting? This is my third DRM post. I must love it. Or hate it. Either way, it’s damn easy to blog about.

I haven’t heard many jaw-dropping suggestions for adequate copyright control which both protects the copyright holders and respects the need of consumers and pirates alike. But this article has some sweet ideas. A big thing is convenience. People want options, and they want options in front of them. Understand that if given the choice, people would buy what they want. Putting up ads for new shows on hulu, or special deals on netflix would probably deter a lot of piracy. If I can buy my episodes of My Little Pony right after I watch Rugrats, I wouldn’t have to go on Youtube to watch them.

Kickstarter

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For those of you who know what Kickstarter is you’ll probably agree that it is a wonderful service. For those that don’t know, Kickstarter is a service that lets anyone post their idea for a project, invention, charity, whatever on the page and then people can donate money to see the project completed, usually with prizes for donating.

Kickstarter has been great for independent filmmakers as it allows common people to overcome the biggest obstacle in making films, money. This has lead to numerous mini-series on youtube and even a few feature length productions.

Recently Zach Braff posted to Kickstarter that he wan’t money to make another film which will probably be similar to Garden State. There is controversy however because Zach Braff has money. The Argument is that people would have to pay to get the film produced and then pay more to see it. Sound’s ridiculous right?

This got me thinking about ownership to the films creative rights should it get made. Normally producers provide the money for films to get made and they are then able to make a profit off of the film because copyright law grants them a certain percentage of the ticket sales depending on how much money they provided for the film. On Kickstarter though people are providing the same function a producer would except that unlike the producer they don’t get paid from the ticket sales and probably wouldn’t get credited in the film. So even though Kickstarter has fulfilled the producer role the “Producers” aren’t getting the reward they should from performing their function in the production of the film.

 

J.K. Rowling and the Boy Scientist

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We have read a lot about the legal issues which burden J.K. Rowling in the wake of her successful Harry Potter series. Striphas emphasizes two major market behaviors threatening Rowling’s copyright: first, he discusses the pre-releasing of Potter books internationally before moving to the international knockoffs such as Tanya Grotter. All this reading of Harry Potter calls to mind another possible copyright influenced work on the famous wizard.

The fanfiction Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is, if my friends are any indication, an incredibly popular text. I believe that fanfictions rarely stand out, this one being a remarkable exception for its pleasing storytelling, interesting premise, and wonderful use of popular literary devices. A disclaimer on the fan-fiction’s original site reads “J. K. Rowling owns Harry Potter, and no one owns the methods of rationality*.” Interestingly enough, though the author credits Rowling, he does not credit himself. This fascinating political ploy epitomizes the divide between fanfiction and knockoffs. Though knockoffs seek to exploit the popularity of a work for profit, fanfiction only borrows a text’s popularity in order to create an interesting adaptation. In fact, “borrow” might not cut it here. A person who writes fanfiction deliberately plays on the popularity of a work for a purpose higher than profit or their own popularity.

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*Although in the following sentence I take the phrase “methods of rationality” in the disclaimer to mean the title of the fan-fiction, I have discovered a second meaning. Yudkowsky probably also refers to the general methods of rationality, the process of rationalization, which are owned by no one since they are innate in all people. Thus, he is commenting on that higher purpose which closes my blog entry by promoting his own philosophy epitomized in the blog Less Wrong.

Piracy in the Video Game Industry

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These guys did a way better job at discussing piracy in a fair and balanced way than I ever could. I encourage you to watch this video regardless of what side you’re on, or where your sympathies fall. I would be doing a disservice to these fine people by summarizing the whole video in this post, so I’ll just hit on one point that hits home to me.

In the middle of the video, the narrator proclaims that there is only one legitimate reason for piracy: if you cannot buy the game legally where you live. To be honest, this is the first reason why I tolerated piracy and the main reason that I continue to do so. If you weren’t aware, there is a lot of good music in Japan. But go on iTunes and search “Jeanne da Arc”  “FLOW” or “The Pillows” and all you get is shoddy ripoffs trying to forego copyright. Many great video games and music simply aren’t for sale in the United States; this is one reason people pirate. This kind of piracy really hurts no one: a person outside of the market receives and appreciates a game. It only expands the fanbase, without hurting sales. If I could buy a Pillows album, you bet I would. Those guys deserve the money. But they won’t sell it to me, or their agents won’t, or American companies won’t take them. But I can still listen to them. And, I think, they’re happy more people can enjoy what they do.

Parodies: Pony Fabulous

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Today, I saw a very well done parody video of one of Taylor Swift’s new songs. After watching, I thought of its implications in terms of copyright, and decided that this video indeed fell under fair use. The purpose of the work is purely entertainment. Since this entertainment is geared, I suspect, to an audience who generally dislikes Swift, the effect on the original song’s potential market is null. With two of the four factors of fair use checked off, I would like to bring a bit of my frenemy Goldstein into this discussion. As noted from his discussion of software protection under copyright, copyright does not protect the method or process of a text, only its expression (191). The creator of this video certainly does not replicate Swift’s expression of her song, since he changes the lyrics entirely and score slightly; his message/theme is entirely different from hers. The sound itself can be thought of as the process: copying that is perfectly legal.

Only a few minutes after thinking of this blog post, I remembered another parody video of a different nature. This video was made by a TV station in order to promote its own show. Since I’m running out of space, I want to consider if this economic element changes the argument for fair use. What makes Equestria Girls different from I Knew Gary Was Trouble? Do they fall under the same or different cases of fair use?

Porn…and Copyright. But Mostly Porn.

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I’m happy. Not only have I found a way to justify discussing my favorite topic ever, but I have also found a library source that will satisfy the blogging requirement. Go me.

If you didn’t know already, porn production companies deal with the same kind of piracy problems that plague mainstream film companies. No where is this piracy more apparent than the internet. For mainstream films, imagine going to youtube to find a clip of a favorite movie taken down from the copyright owner. The same thing occurs on tube sites, the youtubes of porn, when a user uploads a video not intended for sharing. At its heart, the copyright issues are the same between pornography and mainstream film, but there are a few interesting differences worth noting. Differences which I found through the library website, in a newspaper dedicated to film news.

First of all, the article suggests that piracy hits the porn industry less than mainstream movie companies because of their incredible cash flow (which makes me rethink my interest in working for porn). However, any piracy at all can hurt sales. In order to prevent piracy’s negative effects, porn producers will do one of two things. They will either produce fewer films a year, each of such outstanding production quality and encryption technology that piracy becomes difficult. On the reverse side, a studio can produce many low quality films such that piracy becomes negligible in terms of profit. I wonder if mainstream companies can take a lesson from their sexier cousins.

Online pirate websites in the courts again

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It seems like every time I sit down to do these posts, another one of those pirate websites (Megaupload, The Pirate Bay, etc.) is losing a court case. This time, the unlucky party is BitTorrent. Recently, this website and its associates lost a major ruling against Disney, Fox, Paramount, and a slew of other major producers. The ruling was that BitTorrent was allowing for people to illegally download and distribute films and television shows. The ruling was unanimous, and charges will be named soon. It seems as if a new change is coming for the internet. These websites, which once were major powers on the internet, are now being slowly taken apart. It will be interesting to see how this long developments unfolds, and if the legal system is able to truly eliminate these entities.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/03/hollywood-studios-score-appeals-court-win-in-copyright-case/

DRM Hurts More Than Pirates

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After reading a history of copyright legislation, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what law we are now forced to follow. Correct me if anything in this post is wrong, but I think DMCA is still fairly alive and kicking. As Goldstein explains, with new technologies come new responses from companies and the government to define and protect copyright within these new mediums. DMCA attempted to respond to the changes brought by Internet technologies. One important aspect of the act criminalizes attempts to circumvent digital rights management and other access control. I happen to hear about DRM mostly through the gaming communities, as it presents serious problems for online players. From what I can tell (again, correct me) DRM is actually some kind of code or part of the game, so do not think it is just a set of written rights. All DRM impedes pirates, those who would play or mod a game for free, but it also affects legitimate paying gamers. DRM, like any aspect of an online PC game, will slow down the gameplay or shut you out if it does not sync with the rest of the code. I don’t know if you’ve ever played a big MMO online, but it is beyond frustrating to be logged out in the middle of a match (like League Of Legends) or an extensive quest (like Diablo). Furthermore, people criticize DRM for not hurting pirates at all, while all the only ones to suffer are the paying customers. I think it is a glaring problem if your measures to protect your revenue end up hurting your customers. It might just drive them to piracy.

The Legacy of SOPA

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Though it may be an old issue, I think the would-be Congressional laws SOPA and PIPA have raised questions about how best to protect copyright. Surely these acts are dead, but corporations like the Motion Picture Association of America still need to find new ways to protect their economic interests in copyrights. Since most piracy online comes from independent users, a direct approach to monitoring and punishing offenders would be impossible. Instead, copyright laws attack the bigger, more visible targets. For example, SOPA would have shut down an entire site if it had been found to possess copyrighted material illegally (even though the users were responsible for putting that content on the site). With this maneuver out of the picture, it looks like copyright owners are going after internet service providers. One plan calls for providers to slow down internet speed or even cut service entirely from repeat offenders.

Another interesting part of this article: It looks like Google has changed its algorithm to force copyrighted material into low priority on searches. If I can’t find copyrighted material, I guess I won’t be able to infringe it. This caught my attention because Google was one of many sites to black out for a day in protest of SOPA. To see them now compromising with those who would have loved to see the act pass seems hypocritical.

Recent Developments – Germany

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In the past few days, a major development occurred in Germany that will have a profound effect on copyright laws over the internet going forward. Originally, the German parliament was sponsoring a bill that would have negative effects on internet search engines, particularly Google, who has links to various news sources scattered across websites all over the internet. The legislation would allow for newspapers and other news sources require search engines to stop showing these links unless the company agreed to pay licensing fees to the new source. However, heavy lobbying by Google has resulted in the bill being severely watered down. Now, the bill states that while news sources can now require charging search engines for the printing of full texts, the search engines still have free reign in using small snippets of text in advertising links. The bill has passed in the lower house of the German parliament and is awaiting a vote in the upper house. Google is calling this a victory for the free internet movement, but what effect this development actually ends up producing remains to be seen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/technology/german-copyright-law-targets-google-links.html