Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• Being better than free when copies are ubiquitous

  The digital world fundamentally changes what a copy means for copyright. I wrote about this in the past from the legal perspective, suggesting an implied license to reproduce and a greater reliance on other rights. Kevin Kelly has a great post up about the Internet's role as a super-distribution center and how to make money in the face of this ( via Andrew ). Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies? I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus: When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable. When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. In other words, money is no longer in the distribution, but "rather... Posted Feb 22 2008, 10:15 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Business, Law

• Scoble, Facebook and Data Ownership

  I've sort of ignored the whole Scoble/Facebook fiasco, with people arguing on both sides who "owns" the data. Jimmy Gutterman misses the point a bit , because Facebook has already opened up the social graph through the Facebook Platform API. What they don't expose - and why this script resorted to screen-scraping - is any contact information. He paints this as a "lock in" issue, but I doubt that's their primary goal. We already complain enough about the spam we get on Facebook, and I would hate it if someone in my network shared - accidentally or on purpose - that contact information with spammers. So, yeah, I think what Facebook did is a good thing, which seems to be the majority sentiment. Mike Arrington said Plaxo flubbed it and Jeff Jarvis agrees . Loren Feldman called Robert Scoble a corporate spy . Allen discussed how we should approach the data ownership problem . Dare says Facebook is right - since Scoble did not enter any of the contact information... Posted Jan 09 2008, 11:08 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Privacy, Blogging, Law, Facebook

• Arguing Intelligently about Copyright

  Dare has a great rant on copyright . A key purpose of giving authors and other content creators exclusive rights to their intellectual property is to enable them to be rewarded financially from their works for some time before allowing these creations to become "owned" by society. This is supposed to be an incentive that enables the creation of a professional class of content creators and thus benefits society by increasing the number and quality of copyrighted works as well as creating a market/economy around copyrighted works. Most arguments against copyright laws are directly or indirectly an attempt to challenge the existence or benefits afforded the professional class of content creators. It should be noted that professionals dominate practically all areas of content creation (i.e. professionally created content is most popular or most valuable) even when you consider newer areas of content creation that have shown up in the past decade or so. It's because of posts like this that I... Posted May 01 2007, 10:36 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Rants, Copyright

• Understanding the Cablevision DVR lawsuit

  While I agree with Mark Cuban that the lawsuit is a mistake , I thought it was worth discussing why - from a legal perspective - the network DVR is an issue. Copyright gives the owner a limited monopoly over a few aspects, most notably the ability to reproduce and distribute the work. In a "normal" DVR, there are two points where these rights come into play: a reproduction and distribution in the initial broadcast, and a reproduction when saving to the hard drive. (Under current case law, even taking a digital file and loading it into memory to play is technically a "reproduction", fixed for purposes of copyright). The former is obviously licensed by the copyright holder. What allows the latter is a concept known as fair use . (Remember, I said it was a limited monopoly). There are four factors to determining whether something qualifies as fair use: the purpose and character of the use the nature of the work the amount used the effect on the market for the work None of these factors are... Posted Apr 11 2007, 08:25 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Gadgets, Copyright, Video, Law

• Abandonware and Unlocked Cellphones

  This is old news, but in the craziness of the semester I never got around to discussing and I think it's worth mentioning now. The US Copyright Office recently approved six new DMCA exceptions , including exceptions for abandonware and cellphone unlocking . This is a good step, but as Fred mentions the list notably does not include exceptions such as space-shifting. It could be said those uses fall more squarely under Fair Use as opposed to abandonware and cellphone unlocking, but as I alluded to before we shouldn't use the murky Fair Use analysis as a catch all . Still, it's a step in the right direction.... and I can finally recommend downloading this classic game in good faith. Posted Jan 02 2007, 03:31 PM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Law

• Licensing the Office 2007 UI - what is Microsoft's IP strategy?

  Jensen Harris announced that the Office 2007 Ribbon UI can be licensed . For the last year or so, one of the questions I've been asked again and again has been: "Can I use the new Office user interface in my own product?" I have to be honest - I'm a bit baffled at this whole thing. Note, they are not providing any common controls for the Ribbon. Rather, they are "licensing ... intellectual property rights in the UI (which cover both design and functionality) and offering a comprehensive Design Guidelines document that is a roadmap for developers implementing the UI." The license is free as long as you follow the guidelines, and is intended "[f]or those that want to build their own UI that takes advantage of our design guidelines." The reason, as Jensen describes, is that "the new Office user interface was a huge investment by Microsoft and the resulting intellectual property belongs to Microsoft." The next question, of course, are what rights does Microsoft actually have with the Ribbon... Posted Nov 27 2006, 07:24 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Software Development, Things that bother me, Things that amuse me, Copyright, Patent, Microsoft

• Would you trust Zamzar with your data?

  Kevin writes about Zamzar , a free web-based service that converts audio, video and documents from one format to another (via Download Squad ). Sounds cool, but would you trust them with your sensitive data? I don't know about you, but I barely trust Google or Microsoft with this information. Should I trust what appears to be a UK-based startup whose company page provides little, if any, information about the company? In their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy , they make allusions to "respect[ing] the intellectual property rights of others" - though the language seems to be more related to a third party's protected work as opposed to any protected work you are personally uploading. The Privacy Policy also discusses, sort of, how the files are stored and accessible. Storage of User Files When users upload files to be converted Zamzar stores those files on its servers until such time as those files have been converted to the new file format. As soon as this has been done Zamzar removes... Posted Nov 03 2006, 08:37 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Security, Copyright, Web 2.0, Innovation, Privacy

• Shame as DRM

  A German music download service is allowing customers to download unencrypted MP3 files, instead relying on embedded watermarks to discourage copying . The music store sells MP3 files which can be played on almost any digital music player, but adds a unique tag to each download using watermark technology from Germany's renowned Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, which helped create the MP3 audio compression algorithm. The watermark technology makes slight changes to the data in sound files, such as a higher volume intensity in a tiny part of a song, that are undetectable by even the best trained ears, according to Fraunhofer researchers. However, if unauthorized copies of a download turn up on, for example, peer-to-peer file sharing networks, the watermark allows Akuma to identify the purchaser of a file and take action against them. This is a novel approach. It doesn't prevent the copying upfront, but helps in going after infringing users, and seems to me that it would probably... Posted Oct 13 2006, 04:14 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Music, Copyright, Innovation

• Google adds news archives

  Google announced today that it has "added the ability to search through more than 200 years of historical newspaper archives alongside the latest contemporary information." As with its current News service, Google will merely index the content and will not handle content delivery. They will also not charge content owners or consumers for the service. Some of the content Google will be indexing has entered the public domain, but there is still plenty of content that is still under copyright. Google has announced agreements with The New York Times and Time Magazine to provide archived content for the service, but will also include articles "indexed from the Web without formal arrangements with their publishers". If you recall, that practice prompted a lawsuit from the Angence France-Presse , alleged that the headline presented with the photo and excerpt constituted the "heart of the matter" and was thus an infringing use. While I can certainly appreciate the merits of AFP's argument, I do... Posted Sep 06 2006, 05:52 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Google

• The First Sale Doctrine and the Textbook Industry

  As the price of textbooks climbs, more students are purchasing used copies to help defray the cost. Textbooks are effectively disposable, so there will always be a strong supply of used textbooks. Until now, the textbook publishers have tried to preserve their profits by issue new editions (rendering the used copies obselete) and raising the price of new books to recoup costs, and we're left with a self-reinforced cycle ensuring continued price increases. The answer, Freeloader Press thinks, is in free, ad-supported textbooks . I've long complained at the inability to get digital copies of most of my 1,000 page legal textbooks. Given the option, I would even pay an additional $10-15 just to get a second copy in electonic form. Electronic distribution is inevitable, especially when dealing with expensive, disposable items like textbooks. It is better for the publisher, nearly eliminating printing and distribution costs. It is better for the student, who doesn't need to carry 5-pound books... Posted Aug 31 2006, 09:51 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Tablet PC, Innovation