Legal – Page 26 – Digital-Lifestyles

Federal Trade Commission Wants to Get Tough on Bad Patents

Using intellectual property as a form of harassment is on the rise in the US and Europe, and there seems to be no stopping it. US patent laws were last revised in 1952 and many industry leaders claim that they are not relevant to business today.

The Federal Trade Commission is teaming up with Cisco, Intel, eBay, Microsoft, Genetech and others to form a working group to find a solution to the problem of anti-competitive patents and to make the US patent system more equipped to deal with technical patents.

FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson announced the group after a high-level conference on patent reform, Ideas into Action – though the group is yet to be given a name.

Companies and individuals “troll” by exploiting vague patents to either prevent competitors from operating in a particular field or for extracting “license fees” for technologies that may only be distantly related to intellectual property actually in question. Often patent harassment is the sole revenue stream for a company.

3,000 patent examiners in the US handle 350,000 patent applications per year, allowing an average of 17 to 25 hours to check whether a patent application is valid or not. This means that a lot of nonsense gets through – academic studies claim that 95% of all US patents should not have been issued in the first place. Japan and Europe still have a poor showing at 65%.

The FTC wants to make it easier to challenge a patent with the Patent Office without having to go to court, and to limit the award of treble damages in cases.

Ideas Into Action

The Federal Trade Commission

California Approves “Anti-GMail” Bill

The California state senate has approved Liz Figueroa’s email privacy bill, with some revision. “My legislation guarantees that our most private communications will remain just that – private,” said Senator Figueroa.

The bill was revised at the last minute – it originally required ISPs to seek permission before scanning emails. As it stands, e-mail and instant messaging providers can scan emails to build a profile for delivering adverts, but must abide by strict limits on how the data is used. The data cannot be shared, kept or shown to a “natural person”. We take this to mean that humans are not allowed to peek at your mail, but bots can. GMail now has to permanently delete any email at the request of a subscriber.

Anti-spam and virus filtering are covered in the bill, and as this is done automatically by software agents, it has never really been a privacy issue.

GMail

Clear Channel Entertainment Acquires Restrictive Patent on Live Concert CDs

Clear Channel has purchased a patent relating to the recording then sale of a CDs at a live performance – and are claiming that it relates to every venue in the US.

Clear Channel operate a service in their venues called Instant Live, where fans can pre-order a recording before a gig and then pick it up at the venue. Clear Channel purchased the patent for this from DiscLive, who have a similar set up. Now Clear Channel are asserting that the patent doesn’t just cover their 130 venues, but all venues in the US.

This all might have something to do with the fact that DiscLive recently predicted it would gross about US$500,000 (€412,600) selling live recordings at gigs this spring.

Clear Channel, (somehow recently nominated by the Fortune 500 as one of America’s Most Admired Companies) have granted US$1 licenses to small bands using the DiscLive service, but are telling everyone else that they can’t sell live CDs at gigs. Apparently, the patent doesn’t apply to bands who sell their disks days after the performance, only when the recording is sold immediately afterwards.

Steve Simon, Clear Channel executive vice president and the director of Instant Live told the Rolling Stone without a hint of irony: /2We want to be artist-friendly. But it is a business, and it’s not going to be ‘we have the patent, now everybody can use it for free.'”

Expect test cases to begin soon.

The Rolling Stone covers the story

BBC Creative Archive licensing to be based on Creative Commons

In a significant step forward towards the opening of a portion of the BBC’s archives, the BBC today made their intentions for the Creative Archives clearer to other UK broadcasters and public sector organisations. The Creative Archive, originally announced by Greg Dyke in 2003, plans to offer the British public free access to some of the BBC’s audio and video programming.

This afternoon the first meeting of an external consultative panel, which included many UK media holders, heard the BBC’s decision that it will base the Creative Archive usage licence on the Creative Commons (CC) model. This confirmation follows some speculation on the subject. The CC model turns copyright on its head by explaining the ways that the content can be used rather than saying it cannot – or Some Rights Reserved as they put it. By happy coincidence, Creative Commons 2.0 was released yesterday.

By applying a CC-type license to the content, the BBC will enable individuals in the UK to download released content to their computers, share it, edit it and create new content. Commercial reuse of the content will not be allowed.

Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project was clearly excited: “The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity.” He went to enthuse “If the vision proves a reality, Britain will become a centre for digital creativity, and will drive the many markets – in broadband deployment and technology – that digital creativity will support.”

Lessig has been invited by the BBC to be a permanent member of external consultative panel, which is wise because he is clearly at the centre of Creative Commons and politically wise in the BBC becoming closely associated with the whole movement. This announcement will also be a huge boost in profile for Creative Commons.

Paul Gerhardt, Joint Director, BBC Creative Archive explains: “We want to work in partnership with other broadcasters and public sector organisations to create a public and legal domain of audio visual material for the benefit of everyone in the UK.” Those attending today’s meeting included Channel 4; the British Film Institute; the British Library; ITN; JISC; The National Archives; the Natural History Museum; the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council; senior figures from the independent production industry; BBC Worldwide. The BBC plans to keep those attending abreast of the project, while encouraging them to follow the same route to opening their own archives.

This news will give further hope to those who feel the BBC is a leading light in the usage and availability of content in a Digital Lifestyles world. Gerhardt added “We hope the BBC Creative Archive can establish a model for others to follow, providing material for the new generation of digital creatives and stimulating the growth of the creative culture in the UK.”

Read our interview with Paula Le Dieu, Joint Director on the Creative Archive.

Creative Commons

RIAA Sues Yet More People

As part of its programme to deter the public from sharing music, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has just launched legal action against another 493 people.

The RIAA has already settled 486 cases, for and average US$3000 (€2486) each. That represents an income of about US$1,458,000 (€1.2 million) – not a bad return, really.

These new actions are “John Doe” cases as the RIAA doesn’t know who they are prosecuting – their identities will be revealed when the courts issue subpoenas.

However, it doesn’t seem that the RIAA’s action against users of P2P applications like Kazaa and Overnet is having much success. Although the RIAA has now sued 2,947 people peer-to-peer client usage is increasing. Research firm BigChampagne claim that 9.5 million people were logged in to P2P networks in April this year, up from 7.4 million concurrent users six months previously.

What’s wrong with the music industry in one long sentence – Thanks to Simon for sending me this link

Pirated CDs Earning Tourists a Jail Sentence

First it was plane spotting, then it was playing with a GameBoy on the beach – now there’s something else unwary tourists can get thrown into jail for in Greece: buying pirated CDs.

A tourist was arrested last week as he bought two counterfeit CDs from a vendor in Athens, and to give everyone a reminder that such activities are illegal, he earned himself a three month sentence. It’s not recorded what happened to the guy who sold him the CDs, though Greek courts have prosecuted about 1000 illegal sellers in the past.

IFPI spokesman Ion Stamboulis said in a statement: “This is not a symbolic measure. We are determined to prosecute the buyers and we have the support of the authorities.”

Clamping down on the vendors has proven problematic in the past as they have fairly hefty underworld connections, so perhaps the authorities are looking for an easier way to tackle the issue.

The surge in prosecutions is no doubt aimed that trying to fix Greece’s terrible piracy record (the worst in Western Europe) before the start of the 2004 Olympics.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries

MP3 + Blogs = MP3jays?

Audioblogs tap into the human desire to share what’s important to us – or at least to show everyone how cool we are. This growth in “MP3jays” writing audioblogs further demonstrates that there’s a lot of interest out there in what other people are listening to. To join in, Apple have recently included a feature in iTunes 1.5 that allows users to publish up their playlists for all to see (and admire or laugh at) – but outside of iTunes, some blogs are courting controversy by offering unlicensed samples of tracks.

The RIAA could chose to target audiobloggers if they don’t license tracks properly – and since many of the bloggers are individuals, they won’t be able to afford the fees to get legal.

However, the advantages in audioblogs to the industry are immense: people place greater value on individual’s tastes and being able to listen to a piece of music tells you much more about how you feel about it than words ever will. Audioblogs represent high quality, highly-targeted publicity for record companies, and not only is it free, but someone else is paying for the bandwidth.

Try the most successful audioblog out there: Fluxblog from Matthew Perpetua posts music on the site – but all the tracks are used properly and with permission.

Fluxblog

Cannes: Film Makers Meeting to Discuss Piracy

One of the major topics on the agenda this year at the Cannes Film Festival is the growing problem of piracy. A group of 16 executives and studio heads from around the world got together along with the French Minister of culture last night to encourage directors and actors to adopt their anti-piracy message before it’s too late. They are keen to get directors on board because they’re the major victims of the crime.

The think tank is seeking solutions for film piracy, and has come up with three major points:

Firstly, the recognition that downloading films is illegal, and it’s dangerous for the industry (well, you’ve got to start somewhere).

Secondly, that the public need to be educated that downloading is wrong – Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA has already been speaking on university campuses in America. “We need copyrights that are more stern and the political will to enforce them. We need to educate and change behaviour. Too many think that it is risk free so ‘I can do it too’.”

Thirdly, the group recognised that the industry needs to be technologically savvy to be able to combat piracy. Indeed Renaud Donnedieu, the French Minister of Culture and Communication announced: “The President of France is ready to translate such a plan into concrete action and intends to announce a statement next week addressing prevention, repression, communication and positive action.”

Film Festival website

EU challenges EU-wide music royalty structure

The European Commission has sent a shot across the bows of the EU royalty collection agencies, saying they fear by them working closely together across the EU, but bound within their own territories, they will extended the national monopolies the societies current hold in the off-line world, to the Internet, potentially in breach of EU competition rules.

The EU executive said it sent a ‘statement of objections’ detailing its regulatory concerns to the organisations over their so-called ‘Santiago Agreement’ – a pan-EU system that allows national organisations to collect music authors’ copyright proceeds.

In 2001 the collecting societies of the UK (PRS), France (SACEM), Germany (GEMA) and the Netherlands (BUMA) notified the Commission of the ‘Santiago Agreement’. Since then, all other societies from the European Economic Area, with the exception of the Portuguese society (SPA), have signed up. They were also joing by the Swiss society (SUISA).

While strongly supporting the “one-stop shop” portion of the Agreement, and acknowledging adequate copyright protection and enforcement, the Commission “considers that such crucial developments in online-related activities must be accompanied by an increasing freedom of choice by consumers and commercial users throughout Europe as regards their service providers, such as to achieve a genuine European single market. “. The EU wants to encourage competition between the agencies, not consolidation, in their words,

“The Commission considers that the territorial exclusivity afforded by the Santiago Agreement to each of the participating societies is not justified by technical reasons and is irreconcilable with the world-wide reach of the Internet”.

Coming on the heels of the EU record fine of Microsoft Media player, we feel this shows that the EU Commission is serious about protecting the rights of the public to the fair and reasonable access to media in a digital age.

The collecting societies have two and a half months to reply to the Commission’s objections.

EU Press release – Commission opens proceedings into collective licensing of music copyrights for online use

RIAA Starts New Wave of Lawsuits

Keen to keep up the pressure on illegal music swappers, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has launched another wave of lawsuits against illegal music sharers.

So far, the RIAA has launched 2,454 cases since last year, though none of the cases has reached trial stage yet – however, 437 have agreed to pay damages of about US$3000 (€2500) each.

It seems that the RIAA have yet to learn from the bad publicity that accompanied their last lot of legal action: 69 of these new cases are students. Whilst praising colleges for raising awareness of the illegality of copyright infringement, Carly Sherman, president of the RIAA said, “There is also a complementary need for enforcement by copyright owners against the serious offenders to remind people that this activity is illegal.”

The Recording Industry Association of America