Articles For Week 4
Flash DRM could put Dramatic Prairie Dog on endangered list
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080224-flash-drm-could-put-dramatic-prairie-dog-on-endangered-list.html
Ryan Paul writes about Adobe's development on a DRM for Flash video. He voices the opinion that the DMCA's draconian method of shutting down possible infringement will harm what was once protected under fair use, the reusing and remixing of audio and video in flash movies. "The failure of the DMCA to provide adequate exceptions and safeguards for fair use, critics say, undermines the underlying principle of the copyright system, which is to promote creativity by esstablishing a fair balance btween the rights of content producers and content consumers. He goes on to say that in many cases, Flash creators often put video clips in expressive remixes that are protected under fair-use and are even beyond that, a valuable learning tool and a social dialogue that in no way pulls from the creators profits. The Electronic Fronteer Foundation's(EFF) Seth Schoen had this to write about the topic. "[T]he prospect of widespread adoption of DRM restrictions on Flash threatens to squash a growing tradition of expressive fair use of online video—a practice effectively in its infancy that, left unfettered, would be a dynamic solution to our failing effort to teach media literacy. Before we understand how to read media messages, we must first learn how to speak their language—and we learn that language by playing with and remixing the efforts of others. DRM, by restricting the remixing of Flash videos, stands to bankrupt a rich store of educational value by foreclosing the ability of students and teachers to 'echo others' by remixing videos posted online."
The sentiments shared here are the same that are being voiced throughout the lectures and readings in class. Fair-use is the all important counterbalance to the rampant spread of the DMCA and it is being ignored at best by our lawmakers and at worst, actively destroyed.
Running Over Fair Use Like the Hogwarts Express?
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/02/11/running-over-fair-use-like-the-hogwarts-express/?mod=googlenews_wsj
Dan Slater writes about the printing of the Harry Potter Lexicon and its subsiquent attacks from origional Harry Potter author JK Rowling. The book is a printed version of the Harry Potter Lexicon's website and serves to act as a fanmade collection of fanfiction and other things. Warner and Rowling filed a lowsuit against RDR Books that is publishing the books Tim Wu, a former clerk to Judge Posner and Justice Breyer writes "There is a necissary and healthy line between what the initial author owns and what follow-on, or 'secondary,' authors get to do, and Rowling is running over that line like the Hogwards Express."
The internet is stuffed to the gills with fanfiction of all sorts, and while the plots, dialogue, and descriptions might all be origional, the characters places and events are not. The dividing line here is obviously when it was converted to print. The digital age presents all sorts of new situations in which the law is failing to apply, or is applying poorly. The moment something from the digital world crosses over into the physical world it is pounced upon like any other physical object, yet the website remains and was not under seige before this. There is a note made about how the fanfiction might actually be a benifit, free advertising as it were.
Tennessee Eyes Bill to Make Colleges Stop Online File Sharing
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2770/tennessee-eyes-bill-to-make-colleges-stop-online-file-sharing
Andrea L. Foster writes about SB 3974 before the Tennessee Senate that would force public colleges to police their networks. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission would verify that there is now illegal file sharing going on. This is most likely being done due to the MPAA and the RIAA both reporting that the University of Tennessee among some of the worst file sharing schools.
College campuses are hot beds for illegal file sharing and its obvious from the readings, the lectures, and just by turning on the TV that the MPAA and the RIAA want colleges to take the blame for it along with ISPs. Suing individuals, the strategy they were using before is innefficient, and it makes the company look bad. In this way, it seems the public eye is kinder to an organization attacking another organization, rather than individuals, especially since those individuals may not be at fault.