2. Before copyright
• When the printing press was invented in Europe (ca.
1455), it became apparent for the powers that the
dissemination of ideas through mass produced printed
leaflets needed to be controlled.
• This was facilitated by only giving certain individuals the
right to print books through royal privilege (monopoly).
• The motivation behind the monopolies was not to secure
any rights, but censorship.
• When printing was by royal privilege, it was very unlikely
that someone would print anything that would displease
the King.
Side #2
3. A brief summary of copyright
during the last 301 years
• The first law that implements copyright is the Statute of Anne
(1709, UK) or “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by
vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or
purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein
mentioned”.
• The main idea behind the act is to regulate the production
(printing) and distribution of physical copies of a work.
• Reviewing Copyright Law in 2010, most of it hinges on the
rights that somehow attaches itself to physical copies of a
work.
• Without a physical copy, on the surface, there are no
copyright.
2010-11-07 Side #3Hannemyr
4. Current state of affairs
• To the extent that digital media is recognised at
all, it is always as a negation of rights.
• For instance, Norwegian copyright laws
mentions certain permissions or exceptions to
copyright restrictions (fair use or fair dealing) –
but always with the provision: “this does not
apply to a copy of the work that can be read by
a machine” (case law, however, shows that
scanners and OCR-readers are machines that
the courts has yet to discover).
2010-11-07 Side #4Hannemyr
5. The missing bits
• Torrent, hyperlink, frame, inline,
embedded, mashup, etc. are all different
forms of utterances that may be used to
describe literary and artistic works that are
distributed as digital bitstreams instead
of as physical copies on pieces of dead
trees and plastic.
• None of these words appear in current
copyright law.
2010-11-07 Side #5Hannemyr
6. Old school law professors
strike back
• The fact that none of these words appear in the law has
of course not stopped society for applying those laws to
works that are not in a physical format.
• Old school law professors has offered their interpretation
of the law, often with surprisingly creative results.
• For instance, a leading Norwegian professor on
computers and law (rettsinformatikk), Jon Bing, has
suggested that “hyperlinking” should be interpreted as
“making a work available to the public” – the latter, of
course, is a phrase you will find in copyright law. (If he
manages to get this interpretation generally accepted,
the World Wide Web seems to have a bleak future).
2010-11-07 Side #6Hannemyr
7. Bing (2008): Net-utterances and
legal responsibility (figure, p. 98)
Hannemyr Side #7
(Norwegian title: Ansvar for ytringer på nett.)
Figure on the left shows that by double-
clicking a link apparently sends a request
to the publisher of a hyperlink, who the
fulfils the request by forwarding it to the
content provider through the net cloud.
But this is not how thing really happen.
Any request for content goes directly
from the user’s computer to the content
provider’s computer, with involving the
publisher of the link.
The sole act done by a link publisher is
publishing the link – which is a text
string.
8. Hannemyr Side #8
The power of metadata
robots.txt
Reject all robots:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Per document regulation:
<meta name="robots“
content="noindex, nofollow">
More: http://www.robotstxt.org/
10. A more recent example
• On Oct.3, 2010, GD.no (a local paper) published a video
on their webpage showing a wolf in the centre of
Ringebu.
• Because their own video-server apparently suck, they
published the video on YouTube, and embedded the
YouTube stream in their own webpage.
• NRK.no (public service broadcaster) picked up the story
and also embedded the video from YouTube.
• GD.no sends NRK.no a NOK 10000 invoice for
copyright infringement.
• Then prevents everyone from embedding ...
2010-11-07 Side #10Hannemyr
12. Hannemyr Side #12
The shift towards collaboration
Vint Cerf (1997):
“[Tim Berners-Lee] didn't patent the [World
Wide Web]. He didn't copyright. He made
that openly available. And that's what has
fuelled a great deal of the network
develop-ment, and all the innovative
ideas. [...] There is a continuing ethic in
the community to give back to the network
what it has given you.”
14. Hannemyr Side #14
Example 2: Magnatune
• «To download an album so you can play
the songs any time or burn them to a CD,
you have to buy it. When you click to buy,
you see a "suggested" price of maybe $8,
but you can choose to pay as little as $5,
or as much as you want. Here's what's
fascinating: "Everyone assumes we're just
getting $5," Buckman says. "The average
is $8.93."»
16. Hannemyr Side #16
Example 3: Wikipedia
• World-wide encyclopaedia based on a major
collaborative effort.
• Generally recognised has having a large scope and
more content that any single encyclopaedia produced
under the “old” model while at least not being worse in
terms of accuracy.
• Turns out to be a preferred source for professional
users, even when the alternatives also are available at
no cost.
17. Wikipedia vs. Store Norske
Hannemyr Side #17
Period Store Norske Wikipedia
2002 117 0
2003 135 2
2004 178 14
2005 241 137
2006 275 582
2007 520 2296
2008 612 2529
18. 2009 Hannemyr Side #18
Mashup: housingmaps.com
«In web development, a
mashup is a Web
application that combines
data or functionality from
two or more sources into
a single integrated
application.» (Wikipedia)
Housingmaps is a
mashup of Google
Maps and Craigslist
«For rent».
19. FaceBook mashup
• FaceBook solves the
problem by requesting
that their users transfer
very extensive rights
to FaceBook.
• This allows FaceBook
to monetize on content
created by the users.
2010-11-07 Side #19Hannemyr
20. Hannemyr Side #20
Other examples
• Open Access academic publishing
(studies show a higher number of
citations for papers published in OA
publications).
• All the examples that has been described
by other speakers at FCONS.
21. Uncontroversial?
• Examples so far has been uncontroversial
from a copyright point of view, because
sharing is based upon some sort of (more
or less) voluntary opt-in.
• But there is also some mashups and
remixes that current copyright law deems
as illegal.
2010-11-07 Side #21Hannemyr
22. Bush & Blair Love Song remix
Hannemyr Side #22
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=151931508083111702#
http://thru-you.com/#/videos/1/
Video artist Johan Olav Anders Söderbergs
remix: Bush and Blair Love Song.
Remixes copyrighted news footage with the
copyrighted song Endless Love (words and
music by Lionel Richie, duet by Lionel Richie and
Diana Ross in 1981).
I considers Söderbergs work here as brilliant and
original, but using the Richie's work to satirize
Bush and Blair may violate Richie’s moral rights.
[You’ll find a lot more examples of this in the
video “Good Copy, Bad Copy” and on Lawrence
Lessig's talk at TED. Artists like Girl Talk and
DJ DangerMouse has established the remix as a
new art form.]
23. “Jackson Browne's
lawsuit stated that
he was concerned
that use of his
music would cause
people to conclude
he was endorsing
John McCain, even
though the 60-year-
old singer is a self-
described liberal.”
24. Wealth of Networks (2006)
• The networked information economy […] adds to the centralized, market-
oriented production system a new framework of radically decentralized
individual and cooperative nonmarket production. It thereby affects the ability of
individuals and groups to participate in the production of the cultural tools and
frameworks of human understanding and discourse. It affects the way we, as
individuals and members of social and political clusters, interact with culture,
and through it with each other. It makes culture more transparent to its
inhabitants. It makes the process of cultural production more participatory. […]
We are seeing the possibility of an emergence of a new popular culture,
produced on the folk-culture model and inhabited actively, rather than passively
consumed by the masses. Through these twin characteristics — transparency
and participation — the networked information economy also creates greater
space for critical evaluation of cultural materials and tools. The practice of
producing culture makes us all more sophisticated readers, viewers, and
listeners, as well as more engaged makers. (Benkler, p. 275)
Hannemyr Side #24
25. Copyright Reform Now!
• There are a lot more examples out there where the
“stuff” that current copyright law tries to regulate simply
breaks down when it is brought face to face with the
reality of digital media.
• I do not trust the ability of the courts or old schools law
professors to sort this out through “interpretation”.
• A reformed law about the rights and permissions
attached to creative works that recognises digital works
and digital utterances as “first class object” with special
characteristics.
2010-11-07 Side #25Hannemyr
26. Reformed copyright law
• Major undertaking – who are the
stakeholders?
Creative persons as individuals.
Elected representatives of these
(associations, collection societies).
Users: Libraries, media, consumers.
Activists: Pirate Party, Fribit, EFF, etc.
2010-11-07 Side #26Hannemyr
27. Lets get started!
1. Make the right to link explicit.
2. Recognise metadata as a legally binding
mechanism to clear rights.
3. Recognise Free Culture licenses as
something that contributes to society.
4. Recognise non-commercial remixes that
do not infringe on economic or moral
rights as fair use/fair dealing.
2010-11-07 Side #27Hannemyr
28. Lets get started!
5. Make the deposit of binary copies to the
National Library compulsory for publishers
Make digital escrow compulsory and activate
when works are no longer available
commercially.
6. Make explicit provisions permitting the use of
orphaned works.
7. Spend public money on developing semantic
web technologies that makes it simpler for
users to find creative works suitable for their
use.
2010-11-07 Side #28Hannemyr
29. Lets get started!
8. Make it the law that any creative work created
with the tax-payers money refrain free to share
and use for everybody.
9. When it is interest of society, tax-payers
money should be spent on freeing works that
will benefit form being shared and built-upon.
10. Make it the law that any copyright transferred
to a publisher that is no longer exploited by the
publisher should be reverted to the author (or
to the public domain if the author is not
interested in the work any more).
2010-11-07 Side #29Hannemyr
Hinweis der Redaktion
Søk i Mediearkivet - alle kilder
Søkestreng 1: kilde AND (&quot;store norske&quot; or &quot;store norsk&quot;)
Søkestreng 2: kilde AND wikipedia
Fil: wikipedia.xls
Cut & paste direkte inn i Excel - men ikke koblet.