Edited by author 01-31-2006 12:10 PM
Copyright for Dummies

Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of Duke Law school have created a comic book that explains copyright to filmmakers.

Will a spiky-haired, camera-toting super-heroine vanquish the monster of copyright greed and restore decency and common sense to the world of creative endeavor?

Yes. Yes. Vanquish greed.

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Edited by author 01-31-2006 12:10 PM
Google reaches out

Communication is good. Google placates fears in India.

Digitising books is the online era’s equivalent of library “indexing”, responds Anand. This is not intellectual property theft. Moreover, if you “opt out”, your book won’t be put into computer memory. So there’s no coercion.

Yes. Yes. Vanquish greed.

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Edited by author 01-09-2006 12:11 PM
Copyright infringement indeed

Sam Bulte, my local Liberal candidate, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Liberal whose Bulte Report on copyright caused a stir when it came out, is being feted in a little fundrasier next week at The Drake. Guess who's going? Oh, no one. Well, I mean besides all the publishing, theatre and music industry and corporation people who are already helping pay for her campaign. And besides the copyright lobby. But I'm sure they're going because they like a good party and not for any, you kow, corrupt or scandalous reasons (see second entry). Oh, those Liberals; they're so...liberal.

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Edited by author 12-29-2005 08:35 AM
Someone needs to teach Amazon some manners

Ironic it should be R. Crumb. Hey, Amazon. You're supposed to ask nicely before you go and borrow other people's property. Sheesh.

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Patenting plot

Maud Newton reminds us of last week's BoingBoing bit about the fella trying to patent the plot of his story, and reader Edward writes in to say the genre writers are in on it too.


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Is it time to change the copyright laws?

The Creative Commons movement gets some love in the Guardian.


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I just don't understand the kind of people who apply "market forces" on the arts... nobody I know listens to just pop music, or reads just mass-market paperbacks, or sees only the biggest Broadway plays. It's not like developing software.

Any time "the market" is proposed as a force for democracy I start to gag.

Edited by author 10-24-2005 06:54 PM
"What is interesting about this approach is that this proposal strikes a fatal blow to a few cultural monopolists who, aided by copyright, use their stars, blockbusters and bestsellers to monopolize the market and siphon off attention from every other artistic work produced by artists."

What hooey! The problem isn't cultural monopolists forcing crap down people's throats. The problem is that people are willing to pay to have crap forced down their throats, so long as it means saving themselves the trouble of having to be more selective, i.e. to seek out alternatives (i.e. to think) for themselves.

On the other hand, if you do away with copyright protection, there's nothing to stop those cultural monopolists from stealing every good/original/profitable idea from every "entrepreneur" (i.e. artist) who labors away in obscurity to create something.

Edited by author 10-24-2005 04:44 PM
Government-sponsored panels and interest groups in charge of these proposed subsidies already exist in Canada, and exist precisely for the purpose of promoting those sections/stations of art that the market can't provide for. (Whether they are adequately funded or properly run is another discussion.) And what about the people who will just rip off a formula known to work for the sake of profit, not "artistic diversity" or artistic satisfaction? Copyright doesn't exist simply to ensure cultural monopoly, it prevents freeloading and encourages incentives. I seriously doubt many artists would find this "one-year usufruct" (or even a ten-year usufruct) an acceptable alternative incentive towards taking the risks they take, not even in the name of diversity. All in all these measures would stifle the arts, not encourage them.

Is copyright actually hurting writers?
What if we did away with it?

The domination of the cultural market would then be taken from the hands of the cultural monopolists, and cultural and economic competition between many artists would once again be allowed to take its course.
 
This would offer new perspectives for many artists. They would no longer be driven from the public eye and many of them would, for the first time, be able to make a living off their work. After all, they would no longer have to challenge - and bow down to - the market dominance of cultural giants. The market would be normalized.

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What happens when people own the scenery?

Documentaries are having a hard time paying for the copyrights on the world around. How long before you're pop culture references start costing you in your novels?


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Cleared by everyone but the church

Thank God Dan Brown is safe. One copyright lawsuit down... how many to go?


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Google books vs copyright

More on the copyright battle, this time with Google's plans to scan every book and eventually your cheques, shopping lists and text-based tattoos.


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but why is it the "good guys" are the ones hammering away at my rights? Why doesn't anyone add, "of course, this would be a complete disaster for writers."