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John Lemke

Guitar maker sues Web-based t-shirt vendor for shirts reading "born to rock" | Ars Tech... - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...or-shirts-reading-born-to-rock

2012 law legal litigation copywrong trademark guitar born to rock intelectualProperty indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • A guitar design firm called Born to Rock has won an initial victory over the user-generated T-shirt-printing website CafePress in a legal battle over whether CafePress users will be allowed to use the company's name as part of their T-shirt designs. While the guitar firm initially registered the phrase only for use selling guitars, it has taken the position that any use of the phrase "born to rock" by a CafePress user infringes its trademarks.
John Lemke

David Byrne and Cory Doctorow Explain Music and the Internet | culture | Torontoist - 0 views

torontoist.com/...explain-music-and-the-internet

2012 indienationnews intelectualProperty law legal copyright music sampleing culture business businessmodel

shared by John Lemke on 24 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Byrne and Doctorow were there to talk about how the internet has affected the music business. While that was certainly a large part of the discussion, the conversation also touched on all the ways technology and music interact, from file sharing to sampling.
  • Doctorow pointed out that two of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed hip-hop records of the 1980s—Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, and the Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique—would have each cost roughly $12 million to make given today’s rules surrounding sample clearance.
  • “In the world of modern music, there are no songs with more than one or two samples, because no one wants to pay for that,” Doctorow said. “So, there’s a genre of music that, if it exists now, exists entirely outside the law. Anyone making music like Paul’s Boutique can’t make money from it, and is in legal jeopardy for having done it. Clearly that’s not what we want copyright to do.” When the conversation turned to downloads and digital music distribution, both men were surprisingly passionate on the topic of digital rights management, and how it’s fundamentally a bad idea.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Doctorow argued that the way humans have historically shared music is totally antithetical to the idea of copyright laws. He pointed out that music predates not only the concept of copyright, but language itself. People have always wanted to share music, and, in an odd way, the sharing of someone else’s music is embedded in the industry’s business model, no matter how badly some may want to remove it.
  • John Lemke on 24 Sep 12
     
    "Doctorow pointed out that two of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed hip-hop records of the 1980s-Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, and the Beastie Boys Paul's Boutique-would have each cost roughly $12 million to make given today's rules surrounding sample clearance."
John Lemke

Revisiting The Purpose Of The Copyright Monopoly: Science And The Useful Arts | Torrent... - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/nce-and-the-useful-arts-121202

2012 indienationnews legal law government politics IN TNN intelectualProperty IP copyright constitution USA

shared by John Lemke on 04 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • If there’s one thing that needs constant reminding, it’s the explicit purpose of the copyright monopoly. Its purpose is to promote the progress of human knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.
  • [Congress has the power] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
  • has the power, and not the obligation
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • two kinds of monopolies: copyright monopolies and patent monopolies, respectively. Science and the useful arts. The “science” part refers to the copyright monopoly, and the “useful arts” has nothing to do with creative works – it is “arts” in the same sense as “artisan”, that is, craftsmanship.
  • the purpose of the copyright monopoly isn’t to enable somebody to make money, and never was. Its sole purpose was and is to advance humanity as a whole. The monopoly begins and ends with the public interest; it does not exist for the benefit of the author and inventor.
  • The second thing we note is the “science” part. The US Constitution only gives Congress the right to protect works of knowledge – educational works, if you like – with a copyright monopoly. “Creative works” such as movies and music are nowhere to be found whatsoever in this empowerment of Congress to create temporary government-sanctioned monopolies.
  • Which brings us to the third notable item: “the exclusive right”. This is what we would refer to colloquially as a “monopoly”. The copyright industry has been tenacious in trying to portray the copyright monopoly as “property”, when in reality, the exclusive rights created are limitations of property rights (it prohibits me from storing the bitpatterns of my choosing on my own hardware). Further, it should be noted that this monopoly is not a guarantee to make money. It is a legal right to prevent others from attempting to do so. There’s a world of difference. You can have all the monopolies you like and still not make a cent.
  • The fourth notable item is the “for limited times”. This can be twisted and turned in many ways, obviously; it has been argued that “forever less a day” is still “limited” in the technical sense. But from my personal perspective – and I’ll have to argue, from the perspective of everybody reading this text – anything that extends past our time of death is not limited in time.
John Lemke

DOJ Lawyer Explores 'Copyright Freeconomics'; Suggests Copyright Needs To Change | Tech... - 0 views

www.techdirt.com/...opyright-needs-to-change.shtml

lawyer copyright change John Newman newmediaorder business economics law legal intelectualProperty 2012

shared by John Lemke on 11 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Industry organizations have abandoned litigation efforts, and many copyright owners now compete directly with infringing products by offering licit content at a price of $0.
  • This sea change has ushered in an era of “copyright freeconomics.” Drawing on an emerging body of behavioral economics and consumer psychology literature, this Article demonstrates that, when faced with the “magic” of zero prices, the neoclassical economic model underpinning modern U.S. copyright law collapses. As a result, the shift to a freeconomic model raises fundamental questions that lie at the very heart of copyright law and theory. What should we now make of the established distinction between “use” and “ownership”? To what degree does the dichotomy separating “utilitarian” from “moral” rights remain intact? And — perhaps most importantly — has copyright’s ever-widening law/norm divide finally been stretched to its breaking point? Or can copyright law itself undergo a sufficiently radical transformation and avoid the risk of extinction through irrelevance?
  • The other interesting bit of the report is Newman's suggestion that an interesting proposal for changing copyright laws that might actually make traditional "maximalists" and "minimalists" both happy is to increase more moral rights for copyright -- and allow copyright holders to effectively choose if they want to enforce the "economic" rights to exclude by going after statutory damages, or, alternatively, enforce the "moral" rights to protect their reputation. His argument is that this might fit better with the nature of content creation today:
  • John Lemke on 11 Oct 12
     
    "John Newman"
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