folder_open iconJudge In Pirate Bay Trial Biased

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/140
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) April 2009

The judge who handed down the harsh sentence to the four accused in the The Pirate Bay trial was biased, writes Sveriges Radio (Sweden Public Radio): sr.se (swedish). Google translation. The judge is member of two copyright lobby organizations, something he shares with several of the prosecutor attorneys (Monique Wadsted, Henrik Pontén and Peter Danowsky). The organizations in question are Svenska Föreningen för Upphovsrätt (SFU) and Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (SFIR).

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folder_open iconCopyright Lobby Targets ‘Pirate Bay For Books’

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/138
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) April 2009

TTVK, a Finnish national copyright lobby, is threatening a book rental service called Bookabooka for allegedly running the ‘Pirate Bay for Books’. Bookabooka however does not offer a torrent tracker service, nor does it enable a user in any way to download eBooks; it simply provides a place for book owners to rent textbooks to each other via the traditional mail service. It is mandatory that all textbooks must be originals. The service is used by a lot of School and University students, and it does not handle the shipping or returns of the textbooks. Nevertheless, the Finnish book publishers’ association (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) is convinced the service is breaching the copyright laws and threatening their business. TTVK has given Bookabooka until Friday to cease operations or face a lawsuit. Bookabooka’s founders have vowed to keep the service online and ignore the threat.

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folder_open iconBiden Promises ‘Right Person’ As Copyright Czar

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/136
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) April 2009

Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick "the right person" as its copyright czar. Biden warned of the harms of piracy at the private event organized by the Motion Picture Association of America in the sumptuous, newly renovated Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. "It’s pure theft, stolen from the artists and quite frankly from the American people as consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income," Biden said, according to a White House pool report. Biden addressed President Obama’s forthcoming decision about who will be named the intellectual-property enforcement coordinator, better known as the copyright czar. Under a law approved by the U.S. Congress last October, Obama is required to appoint someone to coordinate the administration’s IP enforcement efforts and prepare annual reports. Copyright industry lobbyists sent a letter to the president asking him to pick someone sympathetic to their concerns, while groups that would curb copyright law sent their own letter (pdf) urging the opposite approach. We "will find the right person for intellectual property czar," Biden said.

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folder_open iconCourt Rules Part Of Copyright Act Unconstitutional

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/134
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) April 2009

A year and a half ago, we were quite surprised when the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals actually sided with Larry Lessig, concerning how a part of copyright law that pulled foreign works out of the public domain was potentially unconstitutional. This was in the "Golan case," the third of three big copyright cases Lessig had championed.

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folder_open iconUnderstanding Free Content

Permalink: http://questioncopyright.org/understanding_free_content
Posted by ninapaley | Posted in: Syndicated Articles | Comments(0) April 2009

div class=important-article pstrongContent/strong is an strongunlimited resource/strong. People can now make perfect copies of digital content for free. That's why they expect content to be freenbsp;mdash;nbsp;because it is in fact free. That is GOOD./p pThink of contentnbsp;mdash;nbsp;culturenbsp;mdash;nbsp;as water. Where water flows, life flourishes./p pcenterimg src=/cm/images/ufc/content_is_free.png border=0 width=433 alt=content is free, like water in a river //center/p pstrongContainers/strongnbsp;mdash;nbsp;objects like books, DVDs, hard drives, apparel, action figures, and printsnbsp;mdash;nbsp;are not free. They are a stronglimited resource/strong. No one expects these objects to be free, and people voluntarily pay good money for them./p pcenterimg src=/cm/images/ufc/containers_not_free.png border=0 width=433 alt=containers are not free //center/p pThink of containersnbsp;mdash;nbsp;books, discs, hard drivesnbsp;mdash;nbsp;as jugs and vessels. These containers add utility to and increase the value of the water. If you can get water for free in the public river, greatnbsp;mdash;nbsp;that doesn't reduce the value of vessels. Quite the contrary: when rivers flow, the utility and value of water vessels increases./p pcenterimg src=/cm/images/ufc/free_vs_not_free.png border=0 width=433 alt=free vs not free; use the unlimited resource to sell the limited resource //center/p pContinuing this metaphor: copyright monopolies are an attempt to dam up and control all the rivers, reducing them to a trickle. When Big Media succeeds locking up culture, it's like in closing off water: they get a stagnant pool that turns to poison. Fish die and mosquitoes swarm, because the water has no source to flow from nor destination to flow to./p pcenterimg src=/cm/images/ufc/stagnant_pool.png border=0 width=433 alt=a stagnant pool with mosquitos and fish corpses /br / (That's how we get things like a href=http://blog.ninapaley.com/2008/11/07/fairies-are-forever/ this/a.)/center/p /divpa href=http://questioncopyright.org/understanding_free_content target=_blankread more/a/p
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