Last summer, we wrote about a simply ridiculous lawsuit from a photographer, Janine Gordon, against another photographer, Ryan McGinley, claiming copyright infringement for taking photos that were at best marginally similar. Seriously, the similarities between these photos is hard to see in most cases, and any claims of actual copying seem almost totally non-existent:


Thankfully, the judge made pretty quick work of it, completely slamming Gordon for thinking McGinley's photos infringed, and pointing out that: the dictates of good eyes and common sense lead inexorably to the conclusion that there is no substantial similarity between Plaintiff’s works and the allegedly infringing compositions Throughout the ruling, the judge eviscerates Gordon's arguments, calling her claims "infirm." You might think that Gordon would get the hint. Instead, she's appealing the ruling and insisting that it's the judge who doesn't understand copyright law. As ArtInfo quotes and summarizes from the appeal: "The District Court improperly dismissed my law suit because it did not apply the copyright law correctly," it reads, adding that the previous decision "exhibited a lack of intrinsic comprehension of art, and its expression or intended expression." Gordon claims that the court ignored the copyrightable elements of her work and that its judgement rested on the content rather than the stylistic decisions of her photographs: "the District Court’s focus on the similarity in subject matter, which was only part of my artistic choice, was a great error." Of course, if you read the original court ruling, nothing could be further from the truth. The ruling talks about the "artistic choice" argument too, and found it lacking. Hopefully, the appeals court makes quick work of this as well. As Artinfo notes, McGinley's lawyers certainly don't seem particularly worried.

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The startup Curebit brought something of a firestorm down on its head recently. Here's how VentureBeat broke the story: Curebit, a Y Combinator startup that just closed a round of funding from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups fund, has been caught red-handed stealing HTML code, images, and the like from 37signals. Leaving aside the usual point that Curebit's employees almost certainly didn't break into 37signal's office and physically remove all the HTML code and images in the way that the word "stealing" suggests, here's how Curebit tried to justify its actions with the following rather weak excuse: We had a different homepage, were a/b testing different pages, came across the 37signals post and were like 'wow we should see how that converts!' We are big fans of rails and what 37signals is doing and did not really think through the implications of what we were doing. We just kind of thought about it as a fun test to run. Unsurprisingly, that didn't convince many people, and eventually, Curebit apologized -- sort of: Recently we launched a site with several pages copied from 37signals’ Highrise. We did more than take inspiration from their design – we actually used html & css code, and hotlinked to images on their site. We apologize to David and 37signals for ripping off their work. It was stupid, lazy, and disrespectful of their creative efforts. Curebit still doesn't seem to be admitting that what it did was wrong, although most people would say that it was. But there is an interesting discussion to be had about what exactly it did wrong.

Paul Carr, for example, not only believes that it was copyright infringement pure and simple, he suggests there's some deep hypocrisy flying around the developer community here: The prevailing view, outside of Hollywood, seems to be that IP creators need to accept that copying is here to stay and that criminalising a “victimless” activity is stupid. Make it easy for us to pay for stuff and we won’t have to steal it.

And yet when the victim isn’t a big evil Hollywood mogul (or one of the tens of thousands of people who work for him) but one of our own… well, then IP thieves should be dragged through the streets until they tearfully apologise. What’s the difference? Well, one difference is that most of the things that people copy and share are simply enjoyed in private, not displayed on a company's public web site for people to see and admire. That means that there is an element of passing off here – plagiarism, in other words. Carr addresses the possibility that the anger provoked by Curebit's actions was down to the fact that it was plagiarism rather than simple copyright infringement: Is it, as some argued on Twitter when I asked the question earlier, that plagiarism is different from copyright theft? No. And not least because plagiarism is copyright theft. Like most copyright theft, plagiarism doesn’t deprive the creator of their original work and is usually committed by someone who is too lazy or cheap to acquire or create something legally. Well, Curebit's wrongdoing may well be copyright infringement and plagiarism, but the latter is still very different from the former, and Carr himself goes on to identify exactly why: The only real difference is that in plagiarism the infringer is usually pretending to be the creator of someone else’s work. This is the cardinal sin in a world based on reputation. If you build on somebody else's work, you must give attribution for that work, just as you must cite your source if you blog or tweet a story you have learned about from someone else.

Reputation is the glue that holds together all of the hugely-successful open collaborative software projects like Linux or Apache: there's no money involved (at least, not directly), but people are paid in terms of the respect they earn from their peers for what they do and how well they do it. Failing to acknowledge the fact that you are using their work is tantamount to disrespecting that code -- and hence the norms of the community.

That, I think, is why parts of the developer world world reacted so violently to Curebit's use of 37signal's code and images. If Curebit had admitted what it was doing up front, with full acknowledgement of the provenance of the work, and noted that it was building on 37signal's code as an act of respect, I suggest that few would have cared. The community norms would have been maintained, 37signal's reputation would have been enhanced, and its coders would have received the kudos that was rightfully theirs.

So this is not, as Carr suggests, a case of double standards on copyright infringement. The "infringement" here -- which undoubtedly exists according to the letter of the law – is irrelevant for a community that has placed sharing and collaboration at its heart. This is not about who owns what, but about who respects whom -- and shows it in the appropriate way.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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Mark Zuckerberg's letter to shareholders included in Facebook's IPO filing contains a pretty bold vision for Facebook to not just connect people and enable them to share, but to fundamentally restructure the way that the world works: By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.

We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate. [emphasis added]

That sounds pretty lofty, but if you recognize that Facebook provides a social networking service that hundreds of millions of people use -- but forget for a moment that it's Facebook -- it's quite a bold "social mission." And there are many examples of how the service has been used as a key tool in affecting change on everything from opposition to the Canadian DMCA to the Arab Spring. There's no doubt that the service makes it easier for people to organize in a more bottom-up way.

But, once you remember that it's Facebook we're talking about, the vision sounds more problematic. Could Facebook ever truly bring about a peer-to-peer, bottom-up network? The notion seems to be an inherent contradiction to Facebook's architecture -- as a centralized, proprietary, walled garden social networking service. Facebook may enable a more bottom-up structure, but it's a bit disingenuous for Zuckerberg to decry a monolithic, top-down structure when Facebook inserts itself as the new intermediary and gatekeeper. As a centralized, proprietary, walled garden service, Facebook is a single point for attacks, control, and surveillance, never mind controversial policies or privacy concerns. Facebook may enable a more bottom-up and peer-to-peer network compared to many things that came before, but there is something fundamentally at odds with a truly distributed solution at the core of its architecture and its DNA.

To realize the full potential of bottom-up, peer-to-peer social networking infrastructure, we need autonomous, distributed, and free network services -- the sort of vision that StatusNet/Identi.ca or Diaspora have tried to bring about. Rewiring the world to create a more bottom-up, peer-to-peer network is a bold vision for Zuckerberg to put forth -- and one that Facebook has advanced in many ways -- yet it's fundamentally at odds with the reality of Facebook as a centralized and proprietary walled garden.

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Humans tend to think about other animals in human terms -- which is only natural since we don't really have other frames of reference other than our own experiences. So not surprisingly, it's always interesting when animals seem to enjoy the same activities that people do and seem to be able to solve problems better than we can. Here are just some fairly recent examples.

• Orangutans at a Milwaukee zoo get to play with iPads and even have access to the internet. Pretty soon the zookeepers will have to install internet filtering software so that these orangutans don't try to gamble away their bananas via online casinos. [url]
• The "Monty Hall Dilemma" is a probability problem that most people don't solve correctly by instinct, but some birds seem to? Given "three doors" with mixed grain as a prize, pigeons seem to learn how to optimize their door-choosing strategy better than people. [url]
• People like sledding on snow-covered hills with inner tubes and lunch trays. Crows like to sled down snow-covered rooftops using jar lids. Sledding is just fun, but you'd think that animals that can fly wouldn't be so entertained by sliding along the ground.... [url]
• To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Over 70 different groups, including many who were central to the January 18th online protests against SOPA, have put together a letter asking Congress to put a halt to any attempts to further expand intellectual property laws. The key point: Now is the time for Congress to take a breath, step back, and approach the issues from a fresh perspective. A wide variety of important concerns have been expressed – including views from technologists, law professors, international human rights groups, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and above all, individual Internet users. The concerns are too fundamental and too numerous to be fully addressed through hasty revisions to these bills. Nor can they be addressed by closed door negotiations among a small set of inside the-beltway stakeholders. The letter goes on to point out that Congress cannot and should not continue only taking one industry's point of view into account -- and most certainly should not ignore how existing law is already being abused. Historically, this is exactly the kind of letter that Congress would ignore, but after the events of January 18th, perhaps it'll start paying attention.

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Limewire is long dead and buried as a file sharing platform, and with the company settling the lawsuit filed against it by the major record labels for $105 million (down from the many trillions it had originally said it deserved), you might think that the legal shenanigans were long over. Apparently, someone in the MPAA just woke up to the fact that this might be a way to get some easy cash to pump into its next lobbying campaign, and has just now sued Limewire as well, demanding cash for any of its files that were traded. Of course, a bunch of indie record labels also sued, so it appears that lots of those who chose not to innovate are now trying to feed off of what's left of Limewire's carcass. It does make you wonder, of course, what made the movie studios wait so damn long. Of course, isn't that just like Hollywood? Rather than do something original, it just does a "remake" of something someone else already did?

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With ICE seizing a bunch of websites that were planning to stream this year's Super Bowl, plenty of people had their ears perk up when Patriots starting quarterback Tom Brady admitted that he watched last year's Super Bowl via an unauthorized streaming site online. While his view this year was a bit more up close and personal, lots of people were talking about how NBC Universal finally decided to offer up an official stream of the game -- about a decade later than it should have done so. Of course, reports from users were that -- in typical NBC Universal fashion -- the experience was dreadful. Even more ridiculous? The livestream didn't show most of the commercials because apparently NBC Universal wanted them to pay extra to do so. So, instead, those who watched online "received a heavy dose of the same ads over and over again." In other words, the online experience was worse. Of course, since they have less competition (thank you US government!), NBC has little incentive to improve the product, so expect it to suck for a few more years now that they've finally decided to show the game online.

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Ah, the bogus takedown. The latest is that apparently the NFL somehow and for some reason took down Chrysler's Clint Eastwood Super Bowl commercial from YouTube. Pretty much every advertiser put up their commercials on YouTube, and it's unclear why or how the NFL might claim any sort of copyright on any of those ads. But, for some time that's exactly what happened, making Chrysler's own website promoting the ad look pretty silly: Considering how much Chrysler had to pay for that ad, you have to wonder if they now feel that the NFL owes them something for making it impossible for people to watch for a while...

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The band OK Go has made quite a name for itself over the years as a pioneer/innovator in a number of different ways in the music world. The group has become incredibly famous for their videos, each one of which seems to up the difficulty level. Years ago, they had a simple dance video (filmed in one of their backyards, if I remember correctly), which went viral. Then they had the famous dancing treadmill video. There have been a few others, including a massive Rube Goldberg machine, and now they've taken it up a notch with their latest video, which was part of Chevy's Super Bowl commercial for its new Sonic vehicle. They basically used the car -- and a massive amount of setup -- to have the car help them perform a song: In case you're wondering, there were 55 pianos, 288 guitars, and 1157 of what they describe as "homemade instruments" to make that one work. Also, the video took four months to prepare and four days to shoot... and all of the car driving is actually done by lead singer Damian Kulash, who actually took stunt driving lessons (kinda neat that he can probably write that off as a business expense...). The video description also notes that "each piano had the lowest octaves tuned to the same note so that they'd play the right note no matter where they were struck." Just in case you were wondering.

Of course, beyond just being kinda cool, this hits on a few points that we talk about regularly. First off, it shows how OK Go has continued to do what it set out to do when it freed itself from its EMI contract. Despite their videos getting millions upon millions of views, EMI was too clueless to know how to actually monetize such success. The band figured it could do a better job itself, noting that if you have the fans, there are always ways to make money. The band has also been pretty vocal about being against things like DRM and for things like making it easier for fans to get their music. And, here, they're making money by getting sponsors to help them create their crazy music videos. This isn't a first. The big Rube Goldberg video was sponsored by State Farm.

And, no, no one is saying that every band should get corporate sponsorship (though I'm sure some critics will accuse me of saying exactly that!). It's just that there are all sorts of creative ways for artists to make money these days, and getting some corporate sponsorship is one that gets little attention, but has been growing massively over the past few years. In fact, it was one of the key themes at MIDEM this year, including a fascinating interview of Mark Ronson with Wendy Clark of Coca Cola by Ian Rogers from TopSpin, all about Coca Cola's efforts in the music space.

One of the key things in this is the recognition that content is advertising. Lots of people have recognized the reverse: that advertising is content... but things really open up when you realize that content itself is advertising. And that's something that a lot of brands are recognizing by tying themselves to different content creators, and letting them do cool stuff around their brands. I know that some people find this to be some form of "selling out," but as Ronson points out in the video linked above (and, as I'm sure the folks in OK Go know well) that's pretty silly. Most consumers today know that artists need to make money, and as long as the brand gives them the freedom to be who they are and do what they do, most fans have no problem with these kinds of deals.

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Following Poland's lead, the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Necas has announced that the government there will suspend the ACTA ratification process until the country has had more time to analyze the agreement. This follows a "wave of protests" across Europe, in which this agreement, that everyone assumed was going through with no questions asked, has suddenly generated significant public interest: "By no means would the government admit a situation where civic freedoms and free access to information would be threatened," Necas said.

That is why the government will analyse the issue and have it assessed by experts. "We really must look into the impact it would have in real life," Necas said. Unfortunately, it sounds like some of the protesters are still claiming things about ACTA that were removed ages ago, as Necas is also telling people that it won't require checking laptops at borders or monitoring internet usage. While some of those things were floated in very early drafts of ACTA, all of those have been gone for years at this point. Once again, we have to urge people to keep the ACTA debate fact-based, because misinformation like this makes it easier for countries like the Czech Republic to come back later and say that they're still ratifying the document, because the complaints turned out not to be true. There are plenty of real problems with ACTA, and hopefully people can focus on those. Otherwise these milestone moments in the Czech Republic and Poland will be for nothing....

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As you hopefully know by now, we've been talking a lot about the Trans-Pacific Parntership agreement (TPP) that's being negotiated. That's because following the SOPA/PIPA debate, there's been renewed interest in ACTA -- which is great -- but with ACTA very far along in the process, we think it's important that people are also paying attention to the next attempt by a few legacy industries to sneak bad laws onto the books via international agreements negotiated in absolute secrecy. It's been almost a year since the first version of TPP leaked, despite attempts by negotiators (especially the USTR) to keep it entirely secret. We noted many problems with it at the time, but with the renewed interest in TPP, people are once again dissecting the leaked document. Cory Doctorow, over at Boingboing recently highlighted how TPP will seek to regulate buffer copies: One jaw-dropping leak is that that the treaty contemplates requiring licenses for ephemeral copies made in a computer's buffer. That means that the buffers in your machine could need a separate, negotiated license for every playback of copyrighted works, and buffer designs that the entertainment industry doesn't like -- core technical architectures -- would become legally fraught because they'd require millions of license negotiations or they'd put users in danger of lawsuits.

This isn't the first time that buffer licensing was proposed. Way back in 1995, the Lehman white paper, proposed by Clinton's copyright czar to Al Gore's National Information Infrastructure committee, made the same demand. It was roundly rejected then, because the process was transparent and the people who would be adversely affected by it (that is, everyone) could see and object to it.

This is about legislating chip designs and software architecture, and the only people allowed in the room are entertainment execs. The future of silicon itself hangs in the balance. This is great background info, and there's a little more history to go into here. First, what does the leaked copy of TPP actually say? It's right here in Article 4, Section 1: Each Party shall provide that authors, performers, and producers of phonograms have the right to authorize or prohibit all reproductions of their works, performances, and phonograms, in any manner or form, permanent or temporary (including temporary storage in electronic form). Note the emphasis, added by me. This would require the blocking of any buffer copies without an extra license. This is actually a really big deal for a variety of reasons, and could create a massive chill on important innovations. What the negotiators here are trying to do is to kill off any cloud streaming service (or require it to pay a lot extra). In the US, a few years ago, the 2nd Circuit ruled that Cablevision's remote DVR was legal. Basically, Cablevision set up a bunch of servers that could act like a standard DVR, but rather than the box being at home, it was in a central data center. The TV networks freaked out about this and insisted that it must be illegal. But, of course, the only real difference between this and a TiVo was how long the cord between the DVR and the TV was. It seems ridiculous to think that the copyright could be impacted by the length of the cable.

The key, then, to the TV guys' argument against Cablevision was to show that Cablevision itself was involved in copying works without a license. Since it was the user pushing the button to "record" something that argument wasn't very strong -- so they picked up on a specific piece: that in the process of making this work, Cablevision had to, for an exceptionally brief period of time, buffer the TV streams that it was playing. The crux of the TV networks' argument against Cablevision was that it was that buffer that violated copyright law. The court laughed this off, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, leaving the ruling standing. The TV guys hate, hate, hate this ruling. What they want is for Cablevision to pay them extra to offer this service to its customers.

Courts in other countries have given very mixed rulings on this. The US and Singapore seem fine with remote DVRs, while Korea and Japan have found them to be infringing. As I was writing this story up, we have a preliminary ruling in Australia that such remote DVRs are legal.

The goal of TPP? To kill all of this and make the ISPs and cable guys pay extra to innovate and offer such services. TPP, as written, would require countries to allow copyright holders to "prohibit" the use of buffer copies. That would effectively overrule the Cablevision ruling here in the US and force anyone who wanted to offer such a remote DVR to negotiate for a license.

That's what this is about. It's got nothing to do with stopping infringement at all. It has everything to do with stopping innovation that Hollywood doesn't like -- or rather innovation where Hollywood can't insert a tollbooth. Of course, the collateral damage here would be massive. Beyond making services like remote DVRs illegal overnight, it would raise significant questions about plenty of other technologies. Think just how often buffer copies need to be made when you're dealing with digital files. Imagine if you need a separate license for each of those. For anyone who knows anything about technology, such a proposal is pure insanity. It's an attempt to massively expand copyright law in the age of computers, for something that has nothing to do with the intended purpose, nor components, of existing copyright law. It seeks to put a legal liability for a transitional state of content for no reason other than that Hollywood wants to get paid any and every time a piece of content is touched.

If the USTR (or any of the negotiators) actually understood anything (anything at all) about computers and how technology worked, such a request would be a non-starter. Instead, it's front and center in the copyright section of the TPP.

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in 2007, the Songwriters Association of Canada gained some international headlines with a proposal to legalize non-commercial peer-to-peer file sharing through an ISP levy. This sort of proposal wasn't new, but had not been so prominently put forth by an artist organization before. There were serious problems with the proposal, but it stimulated a healthy debate and it started from many correct premises -- that file sharing should be embraced, that digital locks and lawsuits were not a way forward, etc. But it was a non-voluntary, "you're a criminal" tax that could open the floodgates for other industries to demand similar levies.

I was a member of the Songwriters Association of Canada from 2007-2011, and I had the opportunity to express my concerns about the proposal to many people involved. Last year, I attended a session with an update on the proposal, and was surprised how much it had changed. The proposal had dropped the legislative angle in favor of a business to business approach, with an actual opt-out option for both creators and customers of participating ISPs. Unlike groups behind other licensing proposals, the SAC has actually been responsive to many concerns, and unlike other artist groups, the SAC takes a decidedly positive view on sharing music and the opportunities technology provides to creators. This attitude comes through in the proposal:

Rather than a legislative approach to the monetization of music file-sharing as we originally envisioned, the S.A.C. is now focused on a “business to business” model that requires no new legislation be enacted in Canada.

Our basic belief however remains the same: Music file-sharing is a vibrant, open, global distribution system for music of all kinds, and presents a tremendous opportunity to both creators and rights-holders. [...]

People have always shared music and always will. The music we share defines who we are, and who our friends and peers are. The importance of music in the fabric of our own culture, as well as those around the world, is inextricably bound to the experience of sharing. [emphasis changed]

As the copyright debate heats up again in Canada in light of SOPA and new pressures on pending legislation, this positive attitude towards peer-to-peer file sharing was expressed again in a recent TorrentFreak interview with the SAC VP, Jean-Robert Bisaillon:

We think the practice [of file-sharing] is great and unstoppable. This is why we want to establish a regime that allows everyone to keep on doing it without stigmatizing the public and, instead, find a way for artists and rights holders to be fairly compensated for the music files that are being shared. [...]

Other positive aspects include being able to find music that is not available in the commercial realm offer, finding a higher quality of digital files, being able to afford music even if you are poor and being able to discover new artists or recommend them to friends. [...]

Music is much better off with the Web. The internet network allows for musical discovery despite distance and time of the day. It has sparked collaborations between musicians unimaginable before. It has helped artists to book international tours without expensive long-distances charges and postal delays we knew before. [emphasis added]

However, significant problems remain with the proposal. For example, the original criticism still stands as to how this would scale for other industries -- what about book publishers, newspapers, movie studies, video game manufacturers and other industries that are also crying foul about "piracy"? The SAC dismisses other cultural industries pretty quickly, as if only the music industry is concerned about unauthorized copying. And, just like private copying levies have suffered from scope creep, as people no longer buy blank audio cassettes or CDs, or short-sightedness, as technology changes rapidly, it's not clear how the SAC model would adapt to growing wireless and mobile computing or more distributed file sharing. Many more questions remain: Would small, independent artists, who are not charting through traditional means, get fair treatment? Is it wise to largely rely on a single, proprietary vendor, Big Champagne, for tracking all distribution? Would consumers be paying multiple times for music? What does it mean to "self-declare not to music file-share" in order to opt-out?

But the central problem with the proposal is the SAC's copyright crutch. Jean-Robert Bisaillon says things like,

The Internet has dramatically increased the private non-commercial sharing of music, which we support. All that is missing a means to compensate music creators for this massive use of their work. [emphasis added]

And the proposal says things like,

Once a fair and reasonable monetization system is in place, all stakeholders including consumers and Internet service providers will benefit substantially. [emphasis added] The SAC seems obsessed with a "monetization system," when the truth is there is no one model, no magic bullet. Rather, the the sky is rising and the path to success involves all sorts of different models and creative approaches, most of which don't depend on copyright or worrying about getting paid for every use. Even a voluntary license plan is still a bad idea. The means to compensate music creators isn't missing, it's just increasingly found outside of copyright.

Still, it's important for the SAC's voice to be heard as the copyright debate heats up again in Canada. As a creator group offering a positive take on peer-to-peer file sharing, and denouncing an "adversarial relationship" between creators and fans, they offer an important counterpoint to the SOPA-style provisions being pushed by Canadian record industry groups. I would take the SAC's constructive and responsive approach over record industry astroturfing and fear mongering any day.

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Here's a bizarre one. With Poland putting ACTA ratification on hold, and Slovenia apparently regretting its signature, now we've got Romania's Prime Minister, Emil Boc, admitting that he doesn't understand why the country signed ACTA. It appears that opposing politicians are criticizing the government and promising that they will suspend enforcement under ACTA until there are actual public hearings held on the matter. It really is quite amazing that the folks in the entertainment industry, who thought they could ram this through are now discovering how much they've awakened internet users across the globe ever since they shot for the moon with SOPA. ACTA has been on the table for years, and only a few of us "copyright geeks" were paying attention to it. But SOPA really made it clear to huge populations of people just how the entertainment industry seeks to restrict the internet through copyright law... and they're simply not going to take that any more. Update: And... um... just like that, he's no longer Prime Minister, offering up his resignation today.

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Just John points us to a recent Reddit thread, in which a rather basic suggestion is made for how Hollywood could do a much better job killing movie piracy: by offering something better. It was summarized with the following graphic: Or, basically, create a service that doesn't limit people and offers them what they want, in a convenient manner, at a reasonable price. Simple. Except... that's just not how the MPAA works. As we've stated many times in the past, services like Spotify have massively shrunk how much people in Sweden use The Pirate Bay for music. They now use it for other media, because no one's really created a "Spotify for movies." In fact, whenever the industry seems to get close to creating a good product for video -- see: Hulu or Netflix -- the industry then freaks out that it's going to cannibalize their old way of doing things, and tries to make it worse. It's why the big studios have been pulling content from both services, and trying to limit what they can provide. And that's exactly the wrong thing to do. That's how you encourage more piracy.

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James Firth has an interesting post, talking about some of the more ridiculous consequences of current US law enforcement interpretation of copyright law. Looking at the case of Richard O'Dwyer, the computer science student that the US is getting closer to extraditing to the US to face criminal copyright infringement charges for merely linking to infringing works (something that had already been found legal in the UK multiple times), Firth takes it to its logical ends. He points out that George Orwell's works, Animal Farm and 1984 have gone into the public domain in South Africa, Canada or Australia. And thus, there are completely legal free copies of such works online. But they're only legal in those countries. In the US and the UK, both remain under the yoke of copyright thanks to copyright extensions.

This leads to a simple fear. If he merely pointed people to the location of these completely legal versions of the work, he would now be just as "guilty" as Richard O'Dwyer under the interpretation of the US Justice Department. After all, he is using a .com domain (American property, according to the stretched interpretation of the DOJ) to link to works that technically infringe in both the UK -- where he is -- and the US, where the DOJ has suddenly become the US entertainment industry's private police force.

This is creating a truly chilling effect on speech around the globe. The public domain is the public domain for a purpose, and it's somewhat insane to think that US actions are now chilling the mere discussion of where public domain works in other countries can be obtained completely legally in those countries.

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It seems that, with every issue that comes up around here, people are quickly putting together White House petitions on the White House's "We The People" site. The latest, in response to all of these stories about secrecy concerning the negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), is a petition demanding that the process be more open and transparent. The USTR needs to be more transparent and inclusive in the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty. The public should be informed by regular drafts of language released and open for comment. Members of Technological and on line civil rights groups should be invited to the negotiations. It doesn't have many signatures yet, but perhaps we can help change that...

Of course, as I was finishing up this post, I discovered that there's actually another, similar petition that probably should be signed as well. This one asks the White House to stop participating in the TPP negotiations, which is a much stronger request, and unlikely to actually get agreement from the White House (it also has some silly stuff about "the 1%" which is kinda off topic). I think the more straightforward request that any negotiation actually be open makes a lot more sense. But, either way, it's good to see more people recognizing that the TPP is the next big problem when it comes to Hollywood expanding copyright laws against the will of the public that it will impact. Help make sure the White House knows this is a concern by signing one or both of these petitions.

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So a week ago, as some of you noticed, we had Senator Ron Wyden write the "favorites of the week" post, which got an impressive reaction. And, in fact, the top two highest voted "most insightful" comments both were responses to that post, addressing Senator Wyden. First, we had mudlock who wrote: You make me want to move to Oregon, just so I can say "I voted for that guy!"

If you have more time, I think it would be great if you would do something like a Slashdot interview (although I hear the kids these days are doing reddit AMAs instead? Either or.)

Thank you for your efforts. And, coming in second was the very next comment, from Brendan offering a direct thank you to the Senator: You also stood up against these efforts in congress before others even considered it worth their time. Thanks for that.

As a Canadian, I can't really threaten any senators or reps with my vote, but I sincerely hope your consituents reward you when the time comes. Nice to see lots of people recognizing Senator Ron Wyden's contribution to fighting against bad internet policy (as well as a variety of other dangerous issues, such as abuse of the Patriot Act).

As for editor's choice, I had trouble narrowing it down to just two, so bonus time, you get three this week. First up, we've got Ima Fish discussing Hollywood's inability to recognize that it no longer drives popular culture: How could anyone seriously believe that Hollywood drives popular culture considering that most movies nowadays are either remakes or sequels.

How is it possible to drive culture forward when nearly everything you produce is from the past?! Then we've got Chosen Reject talking about how Redbox is fighting Warner Bros. and going to buy DVDs from alternative sources in order to rent out WB movies that WB doesn't want rented. Something about that seems crazy: I find this absolutely fascinating. Redbox is willing to go to court to fight WB for WB's own sake. This is like some kind of forced intervention for a suicidal person. WB wants to shoot themselves in the foot and Redbox is fighting to stop them. It's almost surreal. And, finally, on the insightful side, we've got an Anonymous Coward doing a quick stock check on the impact of ICE seizing domains of websites that were going to stream the Super Bowl today: New domain name? -Check
Wikipedia the US relations with the TLD country? -Check
48 hours left before superbowl to allow DNS propagation? -Check
Make sure to email all members the new URL? -Check

How much money did ICE waste on this again? The only thing missing from that comment is that it should be "how much taxpayer money did ICE waste..."

Okay, okay. I know what kind of week it's been. You're done with the insight... and you want to move on to the funny. We can do that for you.

Coming in first (by a decently wide margin) was also a comment from the Senator Wyden post. After one of our regular critics tried to attack Wyden, another commenter jokingly asked if that original, trollish commenter was Chris Dodd. That Anonymous Coward brilliantly destroyed that theory: He is the head of the MPAA, use of computers and the interwebs is prohibited. Coming in second, was :Lobo Santo with this gem: "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to create an artificial fish scarcity, and he'll eat steak for a lifetime." -Stephen Colbert On to the editor's choice awards... and for the sake of balance (as well as my own inability to pick just two) you get three of those again. First up, TheStupidOne gives a thorough explanation for Warner Bros. to not even let people put DVDs into someone's rental queue until 28 days after the DVD has actually been released: Don't forget the saying "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." By making their movies completely inaccessible to the people that want them, WB is increasing the excitement their fans have for the movies. By not allowing them to add movies to their queue, the fans will be anxiously checking Netflix daily to see when they can add the movie they wish to watch. Many of those fans will become so excited about the movie that their money will fly out of their wallets and into WB's underground vault. At which point Scrooge McDuck will dive into the pool of cash while WB executives sip celebratory martinis and discuss which sequel to make a sequel of next. Then we have Marcus Carab responding to Jonthan Franzen's statement about how ebooks have no permannce and feel like they can be changed at any time -- unlike good, old fashioned paper, which is somehow permanent and meaningful. Maybe nobody will care about illuminated manuscripts 50 years from now, but I do ... Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they spent hundreds of man hours copying it out by hand and filling it with unique graphical and typographical touches. A printing plate always feels like we could lose that, change that, move the metal type around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough. And, finally, this last comment just missed out on the number 2 spot in the funniest list, and I'm actually happy about that because ever since I saw it, I knew I wanted it to close out this week's comments post. Considering the Super Bowl is starting in just a little while, how could we not have at least one comment make the list mocking the NFL's ridiculous claims that using the term "The Super Bowl" in almost any manner, is an abuse of their trademarks. BeachBumCowboy took things to the next level: Hey Techdirt,

You are all invited to come watch the great athletic event held once a year, roughly 7 weeks before the vernal equinox, played by large athletic males of the teams representing persons who love their country, as well the unusually large persons living in the 3rd largest state of the union of former colonies located in North America. This year said contest will be be held in the capital city of the state admitted on December 11, 1816 to said union, inside the domed sports arena named after a regional manufacturer and distributor of automotive oil, additives, and lubricants.

We will be watching said contest on the large viewing apparatus designed and constructed by the leading electronics maker from the southern most country of the Korean Peninsula, with service provided by the cable provider recently separated from the large conglomerate media company with interests from magazines, to movie studies, and recently Internet providers. It should be a good time with food provided by various crispy tortilla manufacturers and fried spicy chicken wings traditionally associated with a Northeast city located along the border of the two northern most countries of North America. I dunno, he did use our brand "Techdirt" in there. That seems like infringement to me....

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