Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Glyn Moody @ 12:22 am
The startup Curebit brought something of a firestorm down on its head recently. Here’s how VentureBeat broke the story:
Curebit, a Y Combinator startup that just closed a round of funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups fund, has been caught red-handed stealing HTML code, images, and the like from 37signals.
Leaving aside the usual point that Curebit’s employees almost certainly didn’t break into 37signal’s office and physically remove all the HTML code and images in the way that the word “stealing” suggests, here’s how Curebit tried to justify its actions with the following rather weak excuse:
We had a different homepage, were a/b testing different pages, came across the 37signals post and were like ‘wow we should see how that converts!’ We are big fans of rails and what 37signals is doing and did not really think through the implications of what we were doing. We just kind of thought about it as a fun test to run.
Unsurprisingly, that didn’t convince many people, and eventually, Curebit apologized — sort of:
Recently we launched a site with several pages copied from 37signals’ Highrise. We did more than take inspiration from their design – we actually used html & css code, and hotlinked to images on their site. We apologize to David and 37signals for ripping off their work. It was stupid, lazy, and disrespectful of their creative efforts.
Curebit still doesn’t seem to be admitting that what it did was wrong, although most people would say that it was. But there is an interesting discussion to be had about what exactly it did wrong.
The prevailing view, outside of Hollywood, seems to be that IP creators need to accept that copying is here to stay and that criminalising a “victimless” activity is stupid. Make it easy for us to pay for stuff and we won’t have to steal it.
And yet when the victim isn’t a big evil Hollywood mogul (or one of the tens of thousands of people who work for him) but one of our own… well, then IP thieves should be dragged through the streets until they tearfully apologise. What’s the difference?
Well, one difference is that most of the things that people copy and share are simply enjoyed in private, not displayed on a company’s public web site for people to see and admire. That means that there is an element of passing off here – plagiarism, in other words. Carr addresses the possibility that the anger provoked by Curebit’s actions was down to the fact that it was plagiarism rather than simple copyright infringement:
Is it, as some argued on Twitter when I asked the question earlier, that plagiarism is different from copyright theft? No. And not least because plagiarism is copyright theft. Like most copyright theft, plagiarism doesn’t deprive the creator of their original work and is usually committed by someone who is too lazy or cheap to acquire or create something legally.
Well, Curebit’s wrongdoing may well be copyright infringement and plagiarism, but the latter is still very different from the former, and Carr himself goes on to identify exactly why:
The only real difference is that in plagiarism the infringer is usually pretending to be the creator of someone else’s work.
This is the cardinal sin in a world based on reputation. If you build on somebody else’s work, you must give attribution for that work, just as you must cite your source if you blog or tweet a story you have learned about from someone else.
Reputation is the glue that holds together all of the hugely-successful open collaborative software projects like Linux or Apache: there’s no money involved (at least, not directly), but people are paid in terms of the respect they earn from their peers for what they do and how well they do it. Failing to acknowledge the fact that you are using their work is tantamount to disrespecting that code — and hence the norms of the community.
That, I think, is why parts of the developer world world reacted so violently to Curebit’s use of 37signal’s code and images. If Curebit had admitted what it was doing up front, with full acknowledgement of the provenance of the work, and noted that it was building on 37signal’s code as an act of respect, I suggest that few would have cared. The community norms would have been maintained, 37signal’s reputation would have been enhanced, and its coders would have received the kudos that was rightfully theirs.
So this is not, as Carr suggests, a case of double standards on copyright infringement. The “infringement” here — which undoubtedly exists according to the letter of the law – is irrelevant for a community that has placed sharing and collaboration at its heart. This is not about who owns what, but about who respects whom — and shows it in the appropriate way.
By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.
We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate. [emphasis added]
That sounds pretty lofty, but if you recognize that Facebook provides a social networking service that hundreds of millions of people use — but forget for a moment that it’s Facebook — it’s quite a bold “social mission.” And there are many examples of how the service has been used as a key tool in affecting change on everything from opposition to the Canadian DMCA to the Arab Spring. There’s no doubt that the service makes it easier for people to organize in a more bottom-up way.
But, once you remember that it’s Facebook we’re talking about, the vision sounds more problematic. Could Facebook ever truly bring about a peer-to-peer, bottom-up network? The notion seems to be an inherent contradiction to Facebook’s architecture — as a centralized, proprietary, walled garden social networking service. Facebook may enable a more bottom-up structure, but it’s a bit disingenuous for Zuckerberg to decry a monolithic, top-down structure when Facebook inserts itself as the new intermediary and gatekeeper. As a centralized, proprietary, walled garden service, Facebook is a single point for attacks, control, andsurveillance, never mind controversialpolicies or privacyconcerns. Facebook may enable a more bottom-up and peer-to-peer network compared to many things that came before, but there is something fundamentally at odds with a truly distributed solution at the core of its architecture and its DNA.
To realize the full potential of bottom-up, peer-to-peer social networking infrastructure, we need autonomous, distributed, and free network services — the sort of vision that StatusNet/Identi.ca or Diaspora have tried to bring about. Rewiring the world to create a more bottom-up, peer-to-peer network is a bold vision for Zuckerberg to put forth — and one that Facebook has advanced in many ways — yet it’s fundamentally at odds with the reality of Facebook as a centralized and proprietary walled garden.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Michael Ho @ 6:00 pm
Humans tend to think about other animals in human terms — which is only natural since we don’t really have other frames of reference other than our own experiences. So not surprisingly, it’s always interesting when animals seem to enjoy the same activities that people do and seem to be able to solve problems better than we can. Here are just some fairly recent examples.
Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective. A wide variety of important concerns have been expressed – including views from technologists, law professors, international human rights groups, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and above all, individual Internet users. The concerns are too fundamental and too numerous to be fully addressed through hasty revisions to these bills. Nor can they be addressed by closed door negotiations among a small set of inside the-beltway stakeholders.
The letter goes on to point out that Congress cannot and should not continue only taking one industry’s point of view into account — and most certainly should not ignore how existing law is already being abused. Historically, this is exactly the kind of letter that Congress would ignore, but after the events of January 18th, perhaps it’ll start paying attention.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Mike Masnick @ 4:28 pm
Limewire is long dead and buried as a file sharing platform, and with the company settling the lawsuit filed against it by the major record labels for $105 million (down from the many trillions it had originally said it deserved), you might think that the legal shenanigans were long over. Apparently, someone in the MPAA just woke up to the fact that this might be a way to get some easy cash to pump into its next lobbying campaign, and has just now sued Limewire as well, demanding cash for any of its files that were traded. Of course, a bunch of indie record labels also sued, so it appears that lots of those who chose not to innovate are now trying to feed off of what’s left of Limewire’s carcass. It does make you wonder, of course, what made the movie studios wait so damn long. Of course, isn’t that just like Hollywood? Rather than do something original, it just does a “remake” of something someone else already did?
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Mike Masnick @ 3:24 pm
With ICE seizing a bunch of websites that were planning to stream this year’s Super Bowl, plenty of people had their ears perk up when Patriots starting quarterback Tom Brady admitted that he watched last year’s Super Bowl via an unauthorized streaming site online. While his view this year was a bit more up close and personal, lots of people were talking about how NBC Universal finally decided to offer up an official stream of the game — about a decade later than it should have done so. Of course, reports from users were that — in typical NBC Universal fashion — the experience was dreadful. Even more ridiculous? The livestream didn’t show most of the commercials because apparently NBC Universal wanted them to pay extra to do so. So, instead, those who watched online “received a heavy dose of the same ads over and over again.” In other words, the online experience was worse. Of course, since they have less competition (thank you US government!), NBC has little incentive to improve the product, so expect it to suck for a few more years now that they’ve finally decided to show the game online.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Mike Masnick @ 2:21 pm
Ah, the bogus takedown. The latest is that apparently the NFL somehow and for some reason took down Chrysler’s Clint Eastwood Super Bowl commercial from YouTube. Pretty much every advertiser put up their commercials on YouTube, and it’s unclear why or how the NFL might claim any sort of copyright on any of those ads. But, for some time that’s exactly what happened, making Chrysler’s own website promoting the ad look pretty silly:
Considering how much Chrysler had to pay for that ad, you have to wonder if they now feel that the NFL owes them something for making it impossible for people to watch for a while…
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Mike Masnick @ 1:20 pm
The band OK Go has made quite a name for itself over the years as a pioneer/innovator in a number of different ways in the music world. The group has become incredibly famous for their videos, each one of which seems to up the difficulty level. Years ago, they had a simple dance video (filmed in one of their backyards, if I remember correctly), which went viral. Then they had the famous dancing treadmill video. There have been a few others, including a massive Rube Goldberg machine, and now they’ve taken it up a notch with their latest video, which was part of Chevy’s Super Bowl commercial for its new Sonic vehicle. They basically used the car — and a massive amount of setup — to have the car help them perform a song:
In case you’re wondering, there were 55 pianos, 288 guitars, and 1157 of what they describe as “homemade instruments” to make that one work. Also, the video took four months to prepare and four days to shoot… and all of the car driving is actually done by lead singer Damian Kulash, who actually took stunt driving lessons (kinda neat that he can probably write that off as a business expense…). The video description also notes that “each piano had the lowest octaves tuned to the same note so that they’d play the right note no matter where they were struck.” Just in case you were wondering.
Of course, beyond just being kinda cool, this hits on a few points that we talk about regularly. First off, it shows how OK Go has continued to do what it set out to do when it freed itself from its EMI contract. Despite their videos getting millions upon millions of views, EMI was too clueless to know how to actually monetize such success. The band figured it could do a better job itself, noting that if you have the fans, there are always ways to make money. The band has also been pretty vocal about being against things like DRM and for things like making it easier for fans to get their music. And, here, they’re making money by getting sponsors to help them create their crazy music videos. This isn’t a first. The big Rube Goldberg video was sponsored by State Farm.
And, no, no one is saying that every band should get corporate sponsorship (though I’m sure some critics will accuse me of saying exactly that!). It’s just that there are all sorts of creative ways for artists to make money these days, and getting some corporate sponsorship is one that gets little attention, but has been growing massively over the past few years. In fact, it was one of the key themes at MIDEM this year, including a fascinating interview of Mark Ronson with Wendy Clark of Coca Cola by Ian Rogers from TopSpin, all about Coca Cola’s efforts in the music space.
One of the key things in this is the recognition that content is advertising. Lots of people have recognized the reverse: that advertising is content… but things really open up when you realize that content itself is advertising. And that’s something that a lot of brands are recognizing by tying themselves to different content creators, and letting them do cool stuff around their brands. I know that some people find this to be some form of “selling out,” but as Ronson points out in the video linked above (and, as I’m sure the folks in OK Go know well) that’s pretty silly. Most consumers today know that artists need to make money, and as long as the brand gives them the freedom to be who they are and do what they do, most fans have no problem with these kinds of deals.
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Mike Masnick @ 12:23 pm
Following Poland’s lead, the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Necas has announced that the government there will suspend the ACTA ratification process until the country has had more time to analyze the agreement. This follows a “wave of protests” across Europe, in which this agreement, that everyone assumed was going through with no questions asked, has suddenly generated significant public interest:
“By no means would the government admit a situation where civic freedoms and free access to information would be threatened,” Necas said.
That is why the government will analyse the issue and have it assessed by experts. “We really must look into the impact it would have in real life,” Necas said.
Unfortunately, it sounds like some of the protesters are still claiming things about ACTA that were removed ages ago, as Necas is also telling people that it won’t require checking laptops at borders or monitoring internet usage. While some of those things were floated in very early drafts of ACTA, all of those have been gone for years at this point. Once again, we have to urge people to keep the ACTA debate fact-based, because misinformation like this makes it easier for countries like the Czech Republic to come back later and say that they’re still ratifying the document, because the complaints turned out not to be true. There are plenty of real problems with ACTA, and hopefully people can focus on those. Otherwise these milestone moments in the Czech Republic and Poland will be for nothing….
Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Daniel A. Batterman — Mike Masnick @ 11:41 am
As you hopefully know by now, we’ve been talking a lot about the Trans-Pacific Parntership agreement (TPP) that’s being negotiated. That’s because following the SOPA/PIPA debate, there’s been renewed interest in ACTA — which is great — but with ACTA very far along in the process, we think it’s important that people are also paying attention to the next attempt by a few legacy industries to sneak bad laws onto the books via international agreements negotiated in absolute secrecy. It’s been almost a year since the first version of TPP leaked, despite attempts by negotiators (especially the USTR) to keep it entirely secret. We noted many problems with it at the time, but with the renewed interest in TPP, people are once again dissecting the leaked document. Cory Doctorow, over at Boingboing recently highlighted how TPP will seek to regulate buffer copies:
One jaw-dropping leak is that that the treaty contemplates requiring licenses for ephemeral copies made in a computer’s buffer. That means that the buffers in your machine could need a separate, negotiated license for every playback of copyrighted works, and buffer designs that the entertainment industry doesn’t like — core technical architectures — would become legally fraught because they’d require millions of license negotiations or they’d put users in danger of lawsuits.
This isn’t the first time that buffer licensing was proposed. Way back in 1995, the Lehman white paper, proposed by Clinton’s copyright czar to Al Gore’s National Information Infrastructure committee, made the same demand. It was roundly rejected then, because the process was transparent and the people who would be adversely affected by it (that is, everyone) could see and object to it.
This is about legislating chip designs and software architecture, and the only people allowed in the room are entertainment execs. The future of silicon itself hangs in the balance.
This is great background info, and there’s a little more history to go into here. First, what does the leaked copy of TPP actually say? It’s right here in Article 4, Section 1:
Each Party shall provide that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms have the
right to authorize or prohibit all reproductions of their works, performances, and phonograms,
in any manner or form, permanent or temporary (including temporary storage in electronic
form).
Note the emphasis, added by me. This would require the blocking of any buffer copies without an extra license. This is actually a really big deal for a variety of reasons, and could create a massive chill on important innovations. What the negotiators here are trying to do is to kill off any cloud streaming service (or require it to pay a lot extra). In the US, a few years ago, the 2nd Circuit ruled that Cablevision’s remote DVR was legal. Basically, Cablevision set up a bunch of servers that could act like a standard DVR, but rather than the box being at home, it was in a central data center. The TV networks freaked out about this and insisted that it must be illegal. But, of course, the only real difference between this and a TiVo was how long the cord between the DVR and the TV was. It seems ridiculous to think that the copyright could be impacted by the length of the cable.
The key, then, to the TV guys’ argument against Cablevision was to show that Cablevision itself was involved in copying works without a license. Since it was the user pushing the button to “record” something that argument wasn’t very strong — so they picked up on a specific piece: that in the process of making this work, Cablevision had to, for an exceptionally brief period of time, buffer the TV streams that it was playing. The crux of the TV networks’ argument against Cablevision was that it was that buffer that violated copyright law. The court laughed this off, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, leaving the ruling standing. The TV guys hate, hate, hate this ruling. What they want is for Cablevision to pay them extra to offer this service to its customers.
Courts in other countries have given very mixed rulings on this. The US and Singapore seem fine with remote DVRs, while Korea and Japan have found them to be infringing. As I was writing this story up, we have a preliminary ruling in Australia that such remote DVRs are legal.
The goal of TPP? To kill all of this and make the ISPs and cable guys pay extra to innovate and offer such services. TPP, as written, would require countries to allow copyright holders to “prohibit” the use of buffer copies. That would effectively overrule the Cablevision ruling here in the US and force anyone who wanted to offer such a remote DVR to negotiate for a license.
That’s what this is about. It’s got nothing to do with stopping infringement at all. It has everything to do with stopping innovation that Hollywood doesn’t like — or rather innovation where Hollywood can’t insert a tollbooth. Of course, the collateral damage here would be massive. Beyond making services like remote DVRs illegal overnight, it would raise significant questions about plenty of other technologies. Think just how often buffer copies need to be made when you’re dealing with digital files. Imagine if you need a separate license for each of those. For anyone who knows anything about technology, such a proposal is pure insanity. It’s an attempt to massively expand copyright law in the age of computers, for something that has nothing to do with the intended purpose, nor components, of existing copyright law. It seeks to put a legal liability for a transitional state of content for no reason other than that Hollywood wants to get paid any and every time a piece of content is touched.
If the USTR (or any of the negotiators) actually understood anything (anything at all) about computers and how technology worked, such a request would be a non-starter. Instead, it’s front and center in the copyright section of the TPP.
