Copyright

MediaDefender, a company that attempts to disrupt the sharing of copyrighted material owned by its clients on peer-to-peer filesharing networks, has suffered an embarassing security breach–the leaking of 700 MB of emails from senior employees in the company. The leak allegedly occurred because one senior employee was forwarding company email to his Gmail account, and he used the same password for his Gmail account that he used to register for a P2P service of some kind. This breach demonstrates the importance of adhering to corporate policies about use of external mail providers and using good password security–anything really important should have a unique password, not the same one used for accessing a variety of online websites and services. UPDATE: It’s now being claimed that MediaDefender’s phone systems have also been compromised for the last nine months, and a 25-minute phone call between MediaDefender and the New York Attorney General’s office is circulating, as well as a transcript. The transcript indicates that the AG’s office was concerned (rightly so, apparently) about a possible mail server compromise at MediaDefender; the MediaDefender representative states at one point that he is speaking over a VoIP connection. UPDATE: It seems the record companies are using information about P2P downloads collected by MediaDefender to make marketing decisions. Here’s a quote from one of the leaked emails (quoted from SlashDot): Subject: Nicole Scherzinger Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:14:31 -0700 Nicole from pussy cat dolls has a single called “whatever u like”. It’s not selling well on itunes or playing that great on radio. A song called “Baby Love” just leaked (I don’t know how long ago). Interscope wants to know if Baby Love is picking up steam on p2p. They need to make a decision by early next week on whether they should switch to this song as the single. Please get me a score comparison on Monday for these two tracks. Also, please put beyonces, fergie, gwen, and nelly furtado singles as comparisons.UPDATE (September 17, 2007): Ars Technica has a good summary of the breach and what the leaked information shows about what MediaDefender has been up to with its video upload service (apparently designed to encourage the upload of copyrighted content as a sort of sting operation), MiiVi. MediaDefender says it was an “internal project” that was supposed to be password protected but was inadvertently made public. CNet has a story on MediaDefender which notes: ...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit yesterday against Uri Geller and his company Explorogist Ltd. for filing a DMCA takedown notice against a YouTube video posted by the Rational Response Squad. The video depicted an excerpt from the Nova program “Secrets of the Psychics” which featured James Randi showing how some of Geller’s feats could have been done with magic tricks. The video includes about three seconds of footage owned by Geller, which clearly falls under fair use guidelines. To quote from the EFF’s press release: “We’ve seen a rash of people abusing the DMCA lately, attempting to take down legitimate criticism and commentary online,” said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz. “To allow thin-skinned public figures like Uri Geller to abuse this system forces critics to remain silent and creates unfair hurdles for free speech to thrive online." The filings in the case may be found at the EFF’s website. Here’s the video, and a bonus video. UPDATE (August 6, 2008): This lawsuit has been settled. There was a monetary settlement and Geller’s company has agreed to license the footage for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license.

70 D0 87 F2 02 2E 37 96 EB 84 B3 1B B5 92 10 E7 This 128-bit integer was used to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, and all rights to decrypt that haiku with this integer have been given to me. You may not use this 128-bit integer for any purpose; if you distribute it or publish it you are in violation of the DMCA's restrictions on circumvention. (Actually, I've probably blown it by publishing this number--but there are others which are mine and which you also may not obtain or distribute. And that goes for you, too, AACS LA.) You can get your own 128-bit integer and read the haiku for yourself at Ed Felten's Freedom to Tinker blog. Einzige (2007-05-08): Is only the hexidecimal version yours, or do the base 10 and base 3 (and base x) versions also belong only to you? ...

AACS keys are used to encrypt the content of HD-DVDs (this is an oversimplification; see Ed Felten’s Freedom-to-Tinker blog for more detail). A particular “processing key” for AACS has recently been distributed on the Internet, with the AACS Licensing Authority issuing cease and desist orders to try to stop it. This has led to new and creative ways of distributing this 128-bit number, just as occurred with the DeCSS code for decrypting DVDs. When a cease-and-desist order went to digg, digg’s users proceeded to give diggs to many different sites, at one point leading to the entire front page of digg being full of nothing but links to pages with the AACS key. A couple of the more interesting methods include making the number into a song and displaying it with satellite photos of buildings that resemble hex digits. One individual appears to have had it tattooed on his chest. This is exactly what we saw with DeCSS, which is memorialized in Dave Touretzky’s Gallery of CSS Descramblers. This case is even more absurd, in that AACS LA is claiming ownership of a number–and a relatively short one–not because it encodes any content or algorithm, but because it’s one of potentially millions of keys assigned for use with its system. UPDATE (May 11, 2007): As this t-shirt makes clear, trying to protect against the distribution of a 128-bit number is futile when knowledge of the number can be easily distributed without using the number itself. I’d love to see AACS LA try to make a case against the marketing and sale of this shirt.

Scott Adams’ lame arguments for copyright are taken apart by Kevin Carson at the Mutualist Blog. There are good arguments to be made for some form of copyright protection, but Adams doesn’t make them. I guess it’s not just the subject of evolution where Adams goes off the rails. Historical Comments Kevin Carson (2007-04-11): Thanks, Jim.

EFF filed a lawsuit against Viacom for abusing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to cause the takedown of a YouTube video clip called “Stop the Falsiness” which used video from The Colbert Report within the boundaries of fair use. Viacom has issued a pretty solid response (PDF)–that they issued no such DMCA notice, and if they had, YouTube should have notified the user who submitted the clip and given them a chance to file a counter-notice. Viacom further stated that they found the clip elsewhere, reviewed it, and agree that it constitutes fair use of their content and should be put back up. (YouTube has put the clip back up.) This is not good news for YouTube–this is further evidence that they are taking down content without receiving DMCA notices, which means that they are exercising editorial control over their content, which places them at greater risk of failing to successfully defend their claim to be protected by the DMCA’s “safe harbor” protections. Other such evidence comes from Mark Cuban, who has been issuing DMCA subpoenas to YouTube users who have used his content (movies produced by his companies such as HDNet). He has also issued takedown notices for some such content, while explicitly choosing not to issue takedown notices for others–because he wants the promotion from YouTube, just not wholesale theft of his content. Yet YouTube has taken down clips that he has specifically chosen not to issue takedown notices for. This looks like a misstep for the EFF. UPDATE (March 28, 2007): As noted by commenter Jamie, there apparently was a DMCA notice issued by BayTSP, which was hired by Viacom to send out DMCA notices on its behalf, so Viacom may not be in the clear. ...

Here’s Demetri Martin on the Daily Show commenting on the Viacom lawsuit against Google. This is one that’s better to watch on YouTube than on Comedy Central… (Via Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.) Historical Comments cowmix (2007-03-24): "This video is no longer available."he he he

This morning on the Howard Stern Show, there was some discussion of Timothy English’s book, Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll, along with playing some pairs of songs that had very strong resemblances. I didn’t realize that Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was a derivative work, with the main guitar line closely resembling that in Spirit’s “Taurus”–and Spirit used to open for Led Zeppelin. (Apparently a lot of Led Zeppelin’s songs are derivative works.) An example of this kind of borrowing that I recognized myself was when Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” first started getting airplay–I immediately thought that the main guitar riff sounded almost exactly like that in Killing Joke’s “Eighties." It’s not clear which of these borrowings are intentional and which are accidental, but as English’s book makes clear, this is an extremely common occurrence. Some of these have led to successful copyright infringement lawsuits, but most haven’t–at least in the past. The Dr. Demento Show, which I used to listen to every week back in high school, used to have a regular feature called “Damaskas’ Copycat Game” which would play short bits of songs in sequence, demonstrating their similarity. Spider Robinson wrote a short story in 1983 called “Melancholy Elephants” which is a story about a woman who tries to persuade a Senator to oppose an extension of the term of copyright into perpetuity on the grounds that there are finite permutations of notes that are perceived as distinct musical melodies, and thus that the bill would result in an end to creation of new works. In the story, she succeeds in persuading him to kill the bill, while in reality, the equivalent bill–the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998–passed, and Larry Lessig and Eric Eldred failed to overturn it at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 (Eldred v. Ashcroft). While this didn’t extend copyright to “in perpetuity,” it has an economic effect virtually indistinguishable from copyright of infinite duration (as Justice Breyer’s dissent recognized). In 2005, arguments over the practice of sampling music came to a head, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that no sampling could take place without a license–not even for a 1.5-second, three-note guitar riff that N.W.A.’s 1990 song “100 Miles and Runnin’” sampled from Funkadelic’s “Get Off Your Ass and Jam.” This decision led to a protest in the form of a collection of songs composed solely of that sample. [The Downhill Battle organization’s website has been down since November 2007, but can be found on the Internet Archive. -jjl, 6 Jan 2009.] (Related: An excellent short video documentary about the use of a six-second drum sample from The Winstons’ “Amen Brother.") UPDATE (December 27, 2011): The Economist, Dec. 17-30, 2011 year-end issue features an excellent article, “Seven seconds of fire," about the Amen break. UPDATE (May 18, 2014): The estate of Randy California, of Spirit, is suing Led Zeppelin over “Stairway to Heaven” being a derivative work of “Taurus." The site whosampled.com has a list of songs which have sampled “Amen, Brother." I should have noticed that the Killing Joke/Nirvana riff is also very close to an earlier (1982) riff in The Damned’s “Life Goes On” (I certainly listened to the album “Strawberries” enough times…). ...

Comedian Carlos Mencia has had a video removed from YouTube on the grounds of copyright infringement. The video shows a confrontation between Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia in which Rogan accuses Mencia of stealing other comedians’ material–supported by clips of Mencia doing the same jokes as other comedians, and footage of multiple comedians agreeing that Mencia has stolen material. Rogan and Mencia had the same agent, who dropped Rogan over this dispute. The video is still on Google Video, and Joe Rogan gives an overview at his website. The Wikipedia entry on Carlos Mencia also describes this dispute. (Via The Superficial.) UPDATE (February 21, 2007): Ed Brayton (who himself has worked as a stand-up comic) offers his thoughts on this. ...

The broadcast of the Super Bowl contained this announcement: “This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL’s consent, is prohibited." Brooklyn Law School professor Wendy Seltzer, who founded the Chilling Effects clearinghouse of DMCA abuse, posted this piece of the Super Bowl broadcast as an example of a copyright holder exaggerating its rights–clearly the NFL does not own all pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the Super Bowl game. The response–the NFL issued a DMCA takedown notice against her site for the posting, demonstrating that they not only exaggerate their rights, but are willing to abuse the law.