Marley family: "Gonna chase them crazy copyright infringers outta town"

According to the AP:

The Marley name, look and sound are estimated to generate an estimated $600 million a year in sales of unlicensed wares. Legal sales are much smaller — just $4 million for his descendants in 2007, according to Forbes magazine. The Marleys refuse to give a figure.

Now the family has hired Toronto-based Hilco Consumer Capital to protect their rights to the brand. Hilco CEO Jamie Salter believes Marley products could be a $1 billion business in a few years.

The Bobo Rastas are apparently on board too.

"Bob Marley was and still is a stepping stone for many around the world who seek Rastafari roots and culture," said the Rasta rep who identified himself as the Honorable Prophet Moambeh Acosta in an e-mail. "We can only hope and pray for the (family's) success ... as the task seems insurmountable due to the years of piracy and counterfeiting."

Continues the article,

The turn to big business has stirred some grousing from die-hard fans in Internet chat rooms, who say it goes against the grain of a singer who preached nonmaterialism and popularized the Rastafarian credo of oneness with nature and marijuana consumption as a sacrament.

Rather than focusing on street vendors, who hawk everything from Bob Marley T-shirts to beach towels, the partnership is creating a new line of products dubbed "House of Marley" and will police the trademark vigilantly.

The family says it cares less about moving merchandise than about preserving the patriarch's legacy in such efforts as the Marley organic coffee farm, whose product is dried, roasted and packaged in bags emblazoned with Marley song titles such as "One Love" and "Mystic Morning."

"People need to know what they're getting is from the Marley movement, a movement of sustainability," said son Rohan as he showed The Associated Press around the farm...

Sorry ASCAP, a ringtone is not a performance :-(

Says ASCAP: "AT&T has gone much further than Napster ever did."
Says US District Judge Denise Cote: "Puh-leaze." (Not in so many words).
Say the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and the Center for Democracy & Technology: "This ruling should also protect consumers who roll down their car windows with the radio on, who take a radio to the beach, or who sing "Happy Birthday" to their children in a public park (remember, ASCAP once demanded royalties from Girl Scouts for singing around the camp fire!)."

Free information and the information economy

The New Yorker´s Malcolm Gladwell reviews the new book, Free, by the guy that wrote The Long Tail.

Sonic Trademarks: The Case of the Wacky Quackers

From The Times:

At issue is a “sound mark,” the auditory equivalent of a trademark, which Ride the Ducks says it holds on a quack created by a yellow bill-shaped kazoo (called a Wacky Quacker) and which it says Bay Quackers has violated by using a similar kazoo that creates an identical quack.... such sound marks (are) fairly uncommon, with only about 150 registered, a short list that includes the Ride the Ducks quack, the MGM lion’s roar and NBC’s signature chimes.

More on "sound trademarks" here, with audio samples (including more quacking), here.

RIAA will stop suing music file-sharers...

... and will just unilaterally and without recourse cut off internet access for people making files available. Link This isn't too great either.

Bibliographic smackdown

Bibliographic software program Endnotes sues makers of open source Zotero. Let the nerdsmacking commence.

Link

American Anthropology Association goes open access

So AAA has announced that American Anthropology and Anthropology News will now be open access. Kinda. Sorta. The poop is that it is just a first step, and it's only articles before 1974.

IP News / Noticias en Propiedad Intelectual

• El juez en un famoso caso de piracía digital (una madre cabeza de hogar tiene que pagar $220,000 dolares - $457 millones de pesos - por bajar música) equivaló el acto de bajar la música con el intento a distribuirla. Puede haber un nuevo proceso.
• Judge in landmark IP case ($220,000 in damages for single mother for downloading music) equated downloading with intent to distribute, a new trial may happen.

Link/Enlace

The court granted the RIAA’s jury instruction #15 that:
“The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.”
If this was error – if the RIAA had to show actual distribution not mere availability – as the judge ruled it was, Thomas is entitled to a new trial. The RIAA argued the error was harmless because the jury would have convicted on the reproduction right in any case.

• Dice Dept. de Justicia de EE.UU. a la industria de entretenamiento: "No somos sus abogados"
• US Department of Justice to entertainment industry: "We're not your pro bono lawyers" Link/Enlace

"Department of Justice prosecutors serving as pro bono lawyers for private copyright holders regardless of their resources. In effect, taxpayer-supported Department lawyers would pursue lawsuits for copyright holders, with monetary recovery going to industry."

Suzanne Vega on intellectual property, mothering the MP3, and not being half Puerto Rican

I'm not exactly a huge Suzanne Vega (remember "Luka" and "Tom's Diner"?) but this blog post of hers gets more interesting as it goes along, as she ruminates on intellectual property

"I had to go back to all the people who had taken the song without permission, and ask their permission . . . to use their version of my song!"

on being called "the mother of the MP3"

"I ran home and found the article online. The title was “Ich Bin Ein Paradigm Shifter: The MP3 Format is a Product of Suzanne Vega’s Voice and This Man’s Ears.” “The MP3 fools the ear by eliminating the least essential parts of a music file…To create MP3 [Karl-Heinz] Brandenberg had to appreciate how the human ear perceives sound. A key assist in this effort came from Suzanne Vega. ‘I was ready to fine-tune my compression algorithm,’ Brandenberg recalls. “Somewhere down the corridor a radio was playing “Tom’s Diner.” I was electrified. I knew it would be nearly impossible to compress this warm a capella voice.”

and some interesting stuff about race, not least of which is her own history:

"It was astonishing to me to hear that the kids at Joan of Arc Junior High on West 93rd Street were dancing in the street to it one day, since as a kid growing up on the Upper West Side, I was ostracized in some of my classes for being “white.” In African Dance class in 1972, I was smacked in the back of the head for being there at all. (I was raised in a half-Puerto-Rican family, as half-Puerto Rican. I found out at the age of nine or so that I actually had a different father from my brothers and sister — my birth father was English-Scottish-Irish from California.)"

Plus it has some cool remixes of "Tom's Diner."

Die, internet, die

This by Rob Pegoraro at the Washington Post on how the industry is going to kill Web Radio (lots of good links).

Music Biz *Still* Trying to Kill Web Radio

If you're a fan of new music and easily offended by corporate thuggishness, you may not want to read my colleague Peter Whoriskey's story from Saturday's paper about the possible demise of the Pandora Web-radio service.

This is only the latest chapter in a sad saga that's been dragging on for most of this decade: how a largely unaccountable regulatory body and a trade group dominated by representatives of major record labels have tried to inflict a punitive system of royalty payments on Web-radio broadcasters.

The unfairness and irrationality of this idea seemed obvious when I first devoted a column to it, back in 2002. More than six years later, nothing seems to have changed.

In case you've tuned out of this story, here's a quick recap:

1. The royalty payments at stake are supposed to compensate performers (and their record labels) for the use of their music, much as songwriters have long received a small royalty payment for the use of their work.

2. But unlike royalties paid to songwriters, these "performance royalties" don't apply to FM or AM -- whether analog or digital HD Radio broadcasts -- but do cover satellite, cable and Internet broadcasts.

3. Cable and satellite broadcasts pay a simple percentage of their revenues.

4. The proposals cooked up by the Copyright Royalty Board -- a panel of judges appointed by the Librarian of Congress to settle certain intellectual-property disputes -- and backed by SoundExchange, the theoretically nonpartisan group charged with collecting these royalties, would impose a per-song, per-listener fee that many Webcasters say would put them out of business. (See, for example, musician and Webcaster David Byrne's analysis.)

5. Maybe this is all one big coincidence, but in terms of political clout and lobbying efforts, FM and AM broadcasters vastly outweigh satellite- and cable-based music outlets, who in turn easily outrank Webcasters.

As I wrote a year ago, when the CRB reaffirmed this foolish idea, choking off Web radio by imposing discriminatory and disproportionate fees is just about the last thing the music industry needs. Webcasters like Pandora are far more effective at exposing listeners to new music than the playlist-choked wasteland of commercial FM and AM -- so of course we should tax them to extinction, ensuring record labels and musicians a one-time profit, followed by years of much poorer exposure for new musicians.

Seriously, who comes up with this kind of strategy? It's one thing for the CRB to lose its collective mind, it's another for businesspeople who ought to know the market to start sawing their own feet off. It's not as if they'd even make much money in the process: The Web radio industry just isn't that rich.

The people at SoundExchange do not help their cause when they continue to spout melodramatic hyperbole like this line, from Whoriskey's story:

"Our artists and copyright owners deserve to be fairly compensated for the blood and sweat that forms the core product of these businesses," said Mike Huppe, general counsel for SoundExchange.

"Blood"? Give me a break. You represent musicians, not the Marine Corps.

I'm past tired of seeing this story refuse to die. There's only so many times you can see such obvious, blatant abuse of power before you want to find the people responsible, grab them by the lapels, and ask: "What's wrong with you? Why do you hate America?!"

There is, however, one simple and fair way out of this: Congress and should finally pass the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would vacate the CRB ruling and apply the same per-revenue scheme to cable, satellite and Internet broadcasters alike.

Capitalism and Intellectual Property in Academia: Sage Sux

It sounds like a satire on capitalism but reality is often even worse. If you have written an article for SAGE you cannot send your own article to colleagues, you cannot copy nor save it. You can read it on one computer only, according to anthropologist Lisa Wynn. Unless, of course, you pay for it.

Link "Is It Time to Boycott Sage?"

Copyright rules about to harden in Colombia? / La Cultura Digital, ignorada en el documento CONPES de Propiedad Intelectual

Esto de la incansable Carolina Botero. Para leer más y firmar una carta en protesta, ve aquí.

This from the untiring Carolina Botero (English below.)

A finales del 2006 en Canadá irrumpió una campaña de una sociedad de gestión colectiva que tenía como eje un superhéroe de tiras cómicas llamado "el Capitán Copyright", que dedicaba su vida a enseñarles a los niños las virtudes del derecho de autor sin mencionar los límites y opciones del sistema (copia privada, uso educativo, autorización del autor, compartir, etc.) y que no sobrevivió sino unos pocos meses. El Departamento Nacional de Planeación (DNP) colombiano, en la línea del Capitán Copyright, presentará para aprobación del Consejo Nacional de Política Económica y Social (CONPES) un documento sobre propiedad intelectual que se enfoca en “protección y observancia” del derecho de autor como se conoce tradicionalmente, con recomendaciones que incluyen armar una estructura estatal policiva y de "enseñanza y sensibilización" en derecho de autor. En la era digital, con múltiples posibilidades de acceder a la información, con opciones legales para que el autor decida como gestiona sus derechos de autor y para que descarguemos música en Internet, para que la reutilicemos y compartamos, ¿se justifica que el Estado sólo proteja el derecho tradicional de autor, dejando de lado las opciones que se han desarrollado en su entorno, y reforzando la presión de criminalización sobre cualquier conducta que no se ajuste a sus estrictas normas?

Es tiempo que todos nos movilicemos para que los políticos miren por encima de los paradigmas pasados, discutan la nueva realidad de la era digital y las múltiples posibilidades de compartir el conocimiento. Les proponemos a todos los internautas llamar la atención del CONPES, difundiendo esta carta abierta, enlazándola, copiándola en sus blogs, instando a que cada blogger, cada lector, cada ciudadano, cada internauta la apoye con su firma en firmasonline.com para pedir que el Estado colombiano no ignore las posibilidades de la libre difusión y decisión individual sobre el conocimiento en Internet.

***

Carta abierta al CONPES
Sobre la propuesta de documento CONPES “Bases de un Plan de Acción para la Adecuación del Sistema de Propiedad Intelectual a la Competitividad y Productividad Nacional 2008 – 2010”

La propiedad intelectual es el eje de la economía del nuevo siglo, por lo cual definir una política pública en este campo es, de alguna manera, definir el futuro de nuestra sociedad. Sin embargo, el documento que el CONPES se alista a aprobar^[1] sobre esta materia se basa en un diagnóstico incompleto, falla en el intento de detectar las brechas del país en ese campo y se queda corto en la formulación de las posibles estrategias.^[2], manteniendo la posición del gobierno colombiano, único país en oponerse^[3] a la declaración votada en la Organización Mundial de la Propiedad Intelectual (OMPI) sobre fortalecimiento del dominio público en ese entorno.

Un recuento de los olvidos del diagnóstico

1. Software Libre: ¿Quién no usa software libre? Todos, empezando por aquellos que tienen acceso a Internet que lo usan porque su evolución depende en gran medida de este tipo de desarrollos. Por ello resulta incomprensible que se le ignore. Un ejemplo. Apache, el servidor de páginas web más utilizado^[4], es un software de código abierto exitoso respaldado por empresas comerciales y una sólida comunidad de desarrolladores. Pero “compartir” y “proteger” o “controlar” no implica que deje de ser negocio. Lo prueba IBM que a finales de los noventa decidió adoptar software libre como forma de producción, distribución y comercialización mediante un esquema en el que apoya el desarrollo colectivo y comparte el código del software, como en el caso de su proyecto cero con el que IBM contribuye para mejorar Firefox^[5]. ¿Puede el DNP negarse a ignorar este tema en un documento que plantea las opciones del país para utilizar la propiedad intelectual como herramienta de competitividad y desarrollo?

2. Acceso Abierto: Plos (Public Library of Science)^[6] es una serie de publicaciones científicas del Reino Unido en áreas como biología, genética, medicina, etc., que adoptó como política el Acceso Abierto en un esquema en el que la publicación, por un lado, se costea con mecanismos diversos al de cobro a sus lectores y, por otro, los autores y titulares de los artículos permiten la reproducción libre por sus lectores. Con esta fórmula, en pocos años la publicación logró primeros lugares en relación con sus similares^[7], se ha convertido en referencia obligada ubicándose por encima de tradicionales y centenarias publicaciones de Reino Unido en su género^[8], facilitando el acceso al conocimiento y mostrándose como económicamente viable. Pero el ejemplo más claro y contundente se materializa hace solo un mes cuando los profesores de la facultad de artes y ciencias de la Universidad de Harvard decidieron adoptar esta misma política de Acceso Abierto^[9] para el conocimiento que se produzca en ese entorno académico, una decisión que se prevé tendrá un impacto mundial comparable con el que en su momento generó la iniciativa Open Course Ware del MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology)^[10] en relación con material docente.

Estos ejemplos responden a la denuncia de las bibliotecas universitarias sobre el consumo de sus presupuestos en la adquisición de publicaciones especializadas, muchas alimentadas por las propias universidades, pero que a través de intermediarios editoriales regresaban a sus manos con un precio escalado. Las bibliotecas también explicaron como esto generaba circulación restringida del conocimiento producido en la academia limitado a la capacidad de adquisición, sacrificando una cultura académica de compartir, por un esquema de publicación controlado a través del derecho de autor. Este entorno desembocó en un movimiento que se conoce como Acceso Abierto^[11] que promueve el acceso a material de investigación sin las barreras que implica el derecho de autor, a través de la gestión de estos derechos que se conoce como “licencias libres”, especialmente las licencias Creative Commons^[12].

3. Las excepciones y limitaciones de derecho de autor están desactualizadas: En Nocaima (Cundinamarca), hay aproximadamente 50 sordos a quienes la alcaldía busca llegar para facilitar sus procesos de educación y cultura. Se trata de una población en desventaja pues los contenidos a su disposición son pocos y la voluntad de quienes los apoyan encuentra barreras como la obligación de solicitar la autorización a los titulares de materiales ya existentes para adaptarlos a las necesidades de esta pequeña comunidad, lo que complica y encarece cualquier estrategia en este sentido. Garantizar hoy una educación de calidad, que permita cerrar la brecha digital, pasa por actualizar las normas de derecho de autor en materia de excepciones y limitaciones como lo han intentado algunos países (Estados Unidos lo debatió profusamente para el Digital Millenium Copyright Act, por ejemplo) y en consonancia con la propuesta que otros han realizado ya en foros internacionales como la OMPI (Chile, hace tan solo unos días^[13]).

El derecho de autor es un sistema de equilibrios que otorga privilegios a los autores pero a su turno establece límites en beneficio de la sociedad. En los últimos años se han ampliado esos privilegios sin que se hayan actualizado y ajustado sus límites^[14].

4. Educación y cultura libre: En Australia, desde hace algunos años, las escuelas del Estado pueden compartir los libros de texto y el material educativo que producen, sin las barreras de copia, distribución y modificación, para el material que ha sido producido y financiado por el Estado. Este material circula libremente entre tales instituciones gracias a NEALS (Nacional Education Access Licence for Schools^[15]) un esquema de licenciamiento que ha significado un importante ahorro en el pago de derechos de autor en este entorno concreto en material que ellos mismos producen. Un ejemplo similar se presenta en el Reino Unido con la licencia Creative Archive de la BBC^[16], que se enfoca inicialmente en material cultural producido por la cadena estatal y que se ha difundido a museos y, en general, a instituciones estatales que producen con financiación pública contenidos culturales.

Estos ejemplos muestran una tendencia de apertura que se conoce como educación abierta (OER - Open Educational Resources), la primera, o uso de licencias libres en la cultura, la segunda, buscando potenciar las posibilidades de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones -TIC- tanto en lo económico como en la construcción colectiva de soluciones educativas y culturales. Estas alternativas a la visión tradicional del derecho de autor han sido analizada por su impacto en el mundo en general y en especial para los países en vías de desarrollo en foros liderados por la UNESCO^[17] y la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo económico (OECD)^[18].

5. El mercado de la música: También en el campo cultural, artistas reconocidos están ensayando nuevas alternativas al tradicional derecho de autor: Avril Lavigne se unió a un grupo de artistas de Canadá^[19] que se niegan a perseguir a sus fans por cuenta de lo que pueden hacer con las tecnologías: grupos tan exitosos como Nine Inch Nails^[20] o REM han decidido permitir a sus fans reutilizar sus últimas producciones. Más allá del “problema” que representa la descarga, ellos han apostado por empoderar a sus fans para apoyarles en sus propias creaciones. Paul McCartney no lanzó su último disco con su tradicional casa discográfica EMI sino a través de una novedosa campaña con la cadena Starbucks, por que le pareció que las majors (las multinacionales de la industria de la música) ya no entienden su mercado, más bien “parecen dinosaurios discutiendo de asteroides”^[21]. En medio de ese revolcón, los consumidores musicales han encontrado en las nuevas tecnologías otras formas de disfrutar y compartir la música participando incluso directamente como creadores y no solo como consumidores, por lo que han surgido sitios con mecanismos de gestión de derechos de autor amplios, generales y libres que posibilitan estas opciones como sucede en www.CCMixter.com o en www.jamendo.org. El negocio está cambiando y las ganancias algunos la monetizan precisamente con lo que la gente hace con la tecnología. Es claro hoy que mientras el negocio tradicional decae el que se deriva de las TIC aparece como el futuro^[22].

6. En la literatura y otras artes: Mientras importantes editoriales como Penguin Books^[23] o autores famosos como Paulo Coelho^[24] están perdiendo el miedo a exponerse en Internet, y con ello a perder parte del control tradicional para aprovechar otras ventajas, ya hay escritores que se han posicionado a través de la red sin el apoyo de la industria editorial ampliando las posibilidades de acceso para los demás, como Cory Doctorow^[25]. En el tema audiovisual emisoras públicas como la noruega^[26] o alemana^[27] están haciendo ensayos para distribuir sus producciones a través de redes P2P, sin DRM e incluso con licencias libres en el entendido de que su función es llegar al mayor público posible considerando particularmente que su labor no depende de la publicidad.

7. En Colombia: También tenemos ejemplos claros. Los datos del Sistema de Información para la Biodiversidad del Instituto Von Humboldt, el Banco Nacional de Objetos de Aprendizaje del Ministerio de Educación y particularmente la participación que en él tiene la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, la sección de participación del diario El Tiempo, Orfeo (software libre desarrollado por la Superintendencia de Servicios Públicos), artistas como Calambuco, Colombitis, Silvia O, festivales como Medelink, emisoras como Altair, han apostado por sistemas alternativos que les permiten a los usuarios una experiencia diferente frente al acceso a la música, al conocimiento, a la cultura, a la educación, etc.

El diagnóstico en el borrador del documento CONPES:

A pesar de los cambios que ha sufrido el entorno de la propiedad intelectual en las últimas décadas, todas estas opciones han sido ignoradas por el DNP al momento de diagnosticar el sector de Propiedad Intelectual.

El proyecto de documento del CONPES elabora un diagnóstico exclusivamente dirigido a la industria cultural y del entretenimiento tradicional, pero que al momento de abordar las propuestas de estrategias tiene ambiciones mucho más amplias y cubre todos los sectores de la sociedad colombiana sin profundizar en su entorno, sus necesidades, ni sus prácticas sociales.

Si el diagnóstico no abarca en forma integral el estado actual del arte respecto de la propiedad intelectual al día nos estaremos negando como país y como sociedad la posibilidad de analizar su posible impacto, estaremos bloqueando el estudio de las economías que pueden generar o facilitar tales alternativas y, estaremos rechazando de plano las opciones de desarrollo y competitividad que las mismas pueden representar.

Con el documento que se presentará este mes para aprobación en el CONPES estamos adoptando como modelo de desarrollo el de “protección y observancia” del modelo tradicional de derecho de autor, útil para un mundo de medios físicos (impreso, cinta, CD, etc.), pero que no es la única opción en entornos digitales ni en los negocios, y además, es excluyente para ciertos sectores.

Propuesta

1. Solicitamos que hagan parte de estos temas los entes estatales directamente vinculados con actividades de educación y cultura para exponer sus necesidades y entornos jurídicos propios.
2. Solicitamos la discusión pública con todos los sectores de la sociedad de las diferentes partes del documento.
3. De no ser posible, proponemos la discusión y aprobación de otro documento CONPES que tome en cuenta las demás opciones de la era digital, especialmente en el sector de educación y cultura.

---

Notas

[1] “Bases de un plan de acción para la adecuación del sistema de propiedad intelectual a la competitividad y productividad nacional 2008-2010. El documento aún no se ha hecho público pero los borradores están circulando entre las personas que han asistido a las reuniones con el sector público y privado.

[2] El documento fue presentado por el Departamento Nacional de Planeación (DNP) para análisis del sector público y privado en un lapso muy corto y restringido a unas cuantas personas representantes de determinadas instituciones durante la semana antes de semana santa y las observaciones debían entregarse durante semana santa. Sin embargo, como el documento aún debe presentarse para aprobación del CONPES hay tiempo de plantear algunos comentarios.

[3] http://evillan.googlepages.com/colombiayeldominiop%C3%BAblico2

[4] Nota en Netcraft

[5] http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7839.wss

[6] http://www.plos.org/

[7] Respecto de su impacto de cita (número de veces que sus artículos son citados en un lapso de tiempo determinado por pares.

[8] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/varmus.html

[9] http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/02/harvard-faculty.html

[10] http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

[11] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

[12] http://creativecommons.org

[13] http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=3D971

[14] El documento que se presentará al CONPES deja pasar la oportunidad para analizar esta situación por concentrarse en proteger una “propiedad individual”, con ello deja de mirar otros aspectos de un mismo tema que se requieren para favorecer el desarrollo y competitividad de la sociedad como un todo.

[15] https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/tc/neals/

[16] http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/

[17] http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001285/128515e.pdf

[18] http://www.oecd.org/edu/oer

[19] http://www.musiccreators.ca/a_new_voice.php

[20] http://www.nin.com/

[21] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/arts/music/03kozi.html

[23] Yudice, George, “Nuevas tecnologías, música y experiencia”, Editorial Gedisa S.A., primera edición, Barcelona, 2007.

[24] http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSL1875026620071019?sp=true

[24] http://www.quemarlasnaves.net/2008/01/24/paulo-coelho-es-un-pirata-y-gana-dinero-con-ello/

[25] Artículo en Forbes

[26] http://nrkbeta.no/norwegian-broadcasting-nrk-makes-popular-series-available-drm-free-via-bittorrent/

[27] Comunicado de prensa de la cadena regional pública alemana NDR

***
This is the story of the tropical reinvention of "Captain Copyright", a cartoon superhero who was supposed to devoted his life to teaching children the virtues of copyright. Captain Copyright was the brainchild
of Access Copyright, a Canadian collecting society, and the campaign appeared at the end of 2006, "Captain Copyright" was usually portrayed flying in at the scene of a "crime" in which someone published research without proper credit. In the website dedicated to Captain Copyright, the campaign offered educational resources to be integrated into the classrooms of Canadian school children.

The Captain's classroom exercises taught young children about the limits that copyright imposes people's conduct, but failed to address other aspects of copyright, such as exceptions that favour of everyone in society; the public domain; the ability to share, and so on. At that time, commentators like Professor Geist pointed out: "there is no reference to user rights, which are particularly relevant in the education context." He concluded: "Our children need to develop love for learning, a passion for creativity, and appreciation of art and science. The exercises that are offered do not provide any of that. Instead they reduce Canadian copyright to levels not seen before. They are so shameful that they should not be included in any classroom in the country." The campaign shuttered a few months later in 2007.

Recently, the Colombian National Planning Department (DNP) submitted a document on intellectual property for approval by the National Council for Social and Economic Politics (CONPES). The DNP's document builds upon Captain Copyright's idea of protection and enforcement of copyright. As with Captain Copyright, this document emphasises developing Colombian competitiveness and development only through limits, without taking note of the freedoms that make for a balanced system of creativity.

A comprehensive reading of the document suggests that the Colombian state is focusing its efforts and resources into developing our own version of "Captain Copyright" that will give educational recommendations for children, academics and public officials and will likely produce a surveillance state.

The document's main argument is that our country's intellectual property development relies solely on "protection and enforcement". Such a conclusion is based on the fact that the revenue for intellectual property related industries is higher in developed countries than in ours. The document has absolutely no references or background research, achievements and implications of recent approaches such as Free Software, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Business, etc.

Furthermore the document analysis completely ignores important changes in the intellectual property sector evident over the last few years: these aren't just legal tools for increasing copyright control, but rather legal alternatives that empower authors' to manage their rights. Today, authors can exploit new environments for business or can simply decide to share knowledge using technology. In other words, for example, is it justified that Colombian public policies remain focusing on university professors who produce printed knowledge and want to protect their production incentives? Or is it time to also start considering the digital production that follows from different formats that are equally valuable and legal?

This document is not yet public and only a few people were invited to discuss it in the last weeks -- but despite this, an Internet campaign is already bringing attention to the matter, since CONPES will soon deliberate on this public policy. We are focusing our efforts in requesting the CONPES to: (1) involve government institutions related to education and culture to point out their special needs and legal regimes in this issue, (2) to involve civil society actors interested in this topic, and (3) to immediately start drafting another document that will address the other side of the copyright regime; if despite of its limitations, the current document is still approved.

If you want to sign and support go to firmasonline.com

At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web

This from the NY Times.

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: February 12, 2008

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”

Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. Authors would still retain their copyright and could publish anywhere they pleased — including at a high-priced journal, if the journal would have them.

What distinguishes this plan from current practice, said Stuart Shieber, a professor of computer science who is sponsoring the faculty motion, is that it would create an “opt-out” system: an article would be included unless the author specifically requested it not be. Mr. Shieber was the chairman of a committee set up by Harvard’s provost to investigate scholarly publishing; this proposal grew out of one of the recommendations, he said.

The publishing industry, as well as some scholarly groups, have opposed some forms of open access, contending that free distribution of scholarly articles would ultimately eat away at journals’ value and wreck the existing business model. Such a development would in turn damage the quality of research, they argue, by allowing articles that have not gone through a rigorous process of peer review to be broadcast on the Internet as easily as a video clip of Britney Spears’s latest hairdo. It would also cut into subsidies that some journals provide for educational training and professional meetings, they say.

J. Lorand Matory, a professor of anthropology and African and African American studies at Harvard, said he sympathized with the goal of bringing down the sometimes exorbitant price of scientific periodicals, but worried that a result would be to eliminate a whole range of less popular journals that are subsidized by more profitable ones.

Art history periodicals, for example, are extremely expensive to publish because of the reproduction costs, and subscriptions pay for those as well as some of the discipline’s annual gatherings.

Professor Matory also pointed out that “any professor who wants to put his or her article up online can.”

Asked about the Harvard proposal, Allan Adler, vice president for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers, said that mandates are what publishers object to, as when Congress required that any work financed by the National Institutes for Health be funneled through PubMed Central, an open-access repository maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

“As long as they leave the element of choice for authors and publishers,” he said, “there isn’t a problem.”

Supporters of open access say that the current system creates a different set of problems for academics. Expensive journals cut into a library’s budget for scholarly books and monographs, which hurts academic publishers, which hurts the coming generation of scholars who must publish to gain tenure.

Professor Shieber also doubts that free distribution would undermine the journal industry. “We don’t know if that would happen,” he said. “There is little evidence to support that it would.” Nearly all scholarly articles on physics have been freely available on the Internet for more than a decade, he added, and physics journals continue to thrive.

As for the vote, Professor Shieber said: “As far as I know, everyone I’ve ever talked to is supportive of the underlying principle. Still there is a difference between an underlying principle and specific proposal.”

¿Qué es Creative Commons?

¿Qué es Creative Commons? ¿Qué me importa? Este video explica.

Sé Creativo
by animalario-tv

Pimp C., RIP

Pimp C of Houston legendary Houston hip hop outfit UGK was found dead this morning. Link
Below is a killer documentary on Houston hip hop.

Part I


Part II


Part III


Part IV


Part V

From Record Label Hack to Piracy Advocate

Link

Universal Music Group CEO calls iPod users thieves

Link

Los libros tambiéb se piratean

Como lo muestra la historia de una familia paisa... enlace

Big reshuffling in music industry

According to an article in Time (link) Madona left her record company - not for another one but for a concert promoter. Meanwhile Radiohead is selling its new album on the net for "whatever you want to pay" (link) and Prince gave away his new album in a London newspaper (link). What gives? Looks like things are slowly moving toward a massive retolling of the music industry where, as in informal economies like Brazilian tecno-brega and funk carioca and Colombian champeta, recorded music is just promotion for the live show. I guess Benjamin's aura lives.

It seems that the polemic over IP and music has made it deep into th ebelly of the beast, and one wonders when the conservatives at the RIAA or Disney or wherever are going to have a backlash, and what it will consist of...

The Empire Strikes Back: Universal to start music subscriptions service

Can the old-school music business actually be looking to revamp their model? Check this out:

"With the Total Music service, Morris and his allies are trying to hit reset on how digital music is consumed. In essence, Morris & Co. are telling consumers that music is a utility to which they are entitled, like water or gas. Buy one of the Total Music devices, and you've got it all. Ironically, the plan takes Jobs' basic strategy-- getting people to pay a few hundred bucks for a music player but a measly 99 cents for the music that gives it value--and pushes it to its extreme. After all, the Total Music subscriber pays only for the device--and never shells out a penny for the music. "You know that it's there, and it costs something," says one tech company executive who has seen Morris' presentation. "But you never write a check for it.""

Damn!
Here's the link.