This is our third blog post in our off-season spring cleaning series. To recap, we’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward. Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience.
>>> Tidy up time, not sorry to see Knol go.
If real, ???superhero celebrities??? would possess a right to capitalize on their fame, their commercial value ??? just as real celebrities capitalize on their fame by endorsing products. And just as with real celebrities, superheroes would likely demand monetary compensation for the unpermitted use, or ???appropriation,??? of their image. They consequently could look to the courts for redress by filing a ???right of publicity??? claim.
>>> “If?”
Book Haven???s owner Don Hollander (pictured right) was shocked when his store manager Sam Duckor-Jones told him that Phil Priest of Internal Affairs had called to say a complaint had been received that Book Haven had the banned book in stock and that he would come and seize it.
>>> Isn’t that sweet, they called Don to advise they’d be seizing it.
Speech on the Internet requires a series of intermediaries to reach its audience. Each intermediary is vulnerable to some degree to pressure from those who want to silence the speaker. Even though the Internet is decentralized and distributed, “weak links” in this chain can operate as choke points to accomplish widespread censorship.
>>> The Internet is really a series of chains…
In search of “frictionless” sharing, Facebook is putting up a barrier to entry on items your friends want you to see–that is, they’re creating friction. Even if it’s just a onetime inconvenience, any barrier to sharing breaks sharing. The barriers will keep popping up as more content publishers create social apps that have to be authorized before you can view their content. For every five people who authorize an app, I’d guess five will turn away, and eventually get annoyed enough to stop clicking links at all, and maybe eventually annoyed enough to stop visiting Facebook so often, and go searching for somewhere easier and less invasive to simply post a link and have fun with your friends.
>>> There have been stories I haven’t read due to this.
Pakistan recently announced a bold plan to start filtering text messages and censoring them for obscene words. In addition to censoring the obscene words, it seemed like it was part of the plan to censor words that might be obscene in a weird parallel universe, filthy slurs like ???mango,??? ???athlete???s foot,??? and the dreaded ???kmart.??? Of course, in addition to the funny ones, Pakistan intended to ban some more truly controversial (but understandble) words such as ???Jesus Christ??? and any reference to sexual orientation or sex in general. That includes ???deeper.???
>>> There’s always someone stupid enough to propose this “solution.” From schools to sovereign states. Pathetic.
So, what is copyright???s future?
Copyright is an unethical anachronism. It still works as a weapon with which to threaten or punish infringers (with or without evidence), but even with draconian enforcement, the monopoly has ended.
When privileged immortal corporations collide with a population naturally at liberty, the latter will prevail, however draconian their ???education??? by the former.
Nevertheless, without copyright, natural rights remain, e.g. an author???s exclusive right to their writings, truth in authorship, etc.
Moreover, the market for intellectual work can continue quite happily without a reproduction monopoly. Indeed, it will thrive.
But I had to laugh when I read this, “Copyright is a historical accident, a legislative error made in a less principled era.”
Does Crosbie believe there is a less principled era than the current one with respect to the grotesque cancerous enlargement of “rights” for the few?
People have come to see copyright as a tool of punishment, Europe’s technology chief has said in her strongest-yet attack on the current copyright system.
Digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said on Saturday that the creative industries had to embrace rather than resist new technological ways of distributing artistic works. She added that the existing copyright system was not rewarding the vast majority of artists.
“Is the current copyright system the right and only tool to achieve our objectives? Not really,” Kroes said in a speech to the Forum D’Avignon thinktank. “Citizens increasingly hear the word copyright and hate what is behind it.”
>>> The headline isn’t news (and is wrong to the extent that IP rights holders, that specially vulnerable group is making money in a recession, just not as much as their greed might require) but it seems to be breaking into the higher echelons of some jurisdictions.
Sad comments from the Register of Copyrights to the effect that without SOPA copyright cannot work. Well if SOPA is the price, who wants it to work?
At 10:00am on Monday November 21st NZDT, a signed version of the .nz zone went live, with the DNSKEY set obscured to prevent validation. This is our first deployment step according to our schedule.
Cool.
Awesome reminder of the chaos that is residential video content consumption.
Hamish MacEwan 