The Rise of the Patent Troll: An Animated Primer by Kirby Ferguson

in Law, Media, Politics | April 14th, 2014

Recent­ly, I’ve been spend­ing time inves­ti­gat­ing copy­rights, keen to find out if it’s crick­et for me to impose my vision on cer­tain authors’ long ago work. An author myself, I freely admit, I might not cot­ton to it were some stranger to have her way with my work, with­out per­mis­sion, on a stage, for all to see! Either way, I’d pre­fer things to be set­tled with­out a law­suit.

My head was so full of copy­right impli­ca­tions and loop­holes, I was unaware that a par­al­lel sit­u­a­tion was blow­ing up beyond all rea­son in the world of patents. Such igno­rance is a lux­u­ry unavail­able to legions of small soft­ware design­ers, pod­cast­ers, and small busi­ness own­ers, as artist and film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son of “Every­thing is a Remix” fame makes clear in his ani­mat­ed primer, “Rise of the Patent Troll.”

The prob­lem, he says, owes to a gap between cen­turies old patent law and a new tech­nol­o­gy that yields “inven­tions” whose parts can’t be attrib­uted as eas­i­ly as your aver­age sewing machine’s or cot­ton gin’s.

Depict­ed here as hairy, pointy-eared sto­ry­book fig­ures, the real life bad­dies are much more scary—newly formed cor­po­rate enti­ties oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly seek­ing to enforce patents for dig­i­tal inno­va­tions they don’t real­ly own. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, they’re tar­get­ing the lit­tle guys, indi­vid­u­als who don’t have the resources to defend them­selves when attacked. Yes, in this con­text, a fair­ly renowned come­di­an can be con­sid­ered a lit­tle guy.

Fer­gu­son joined forces with dig­i­tal watch­dogs Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion, Pub­lic Knowl­edge, and Engine to make the film, but the prob­lem proves too slip­pery to ful­ly explore in three ani­mat­ed min­utes. I think the car­toon is actu­al­ly bait, to get view­ers like me to sit still for the next three min­utes, in which the artist turns the cam­era on him­self, to enu­mer­ate what cit­i­zens can do to make a pro­posed patent reform bill stick. If it all feels rather urgent, I’m guess­ing there’s a rea­son.

For more back­ground on what patent trolls are all about, don’t miss this episode of This Amer­i­can Life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Kir­by Fer­gu­son Explains How Apple’s iPhone Was A Remixed Cre­ation

Ayun Hal­l­i­day would freak worse than a goat if one of these trolls came after her. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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What Books, Movies, Songs & Paintings Could Have Entered the Public Domain on January 1, 2014?

in Art, Books, Film, Law, Music | January 2nd, 2014

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Every year, Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain high­lights major works that would have entered the pub­lic domain had the copy­right law that pre­vailed until 1978 still remained in effect today. That law (estab­lished in 1909) allowed works to remain under copy­right for a max­i­mum of 56 years — which means that 2014 would have wel­comed into the pub­lic domain works first pub­lished in 1957. Some high­lights (from the longer list) include:

Books

  • Jack Ker­ouac, On the Road
  • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
  • Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas and The Cat in the Hat
  • Studs Terkel, Giants of Jazz
  • Ian Flem­ing, From Rus­sia, with Love

Movies

  • 12 Angry Men (Hen­ry Fon­da, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klug­man, Ed Beg­ley, and more)
  • A Farewell to Arms (Rock Hud­son and Jen­nifer Jones)
  • Jail­house Rock (Elvis Pres­ley)
  • The Sev­enth Seal (writ­ten and direct­ed by Ing­mar Bergman and star­ring Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot)
  • Fun­ny Face (Audrey Hep­burn and Fred Astaire)
  • Gun­fight at the O.K. Cor­ral (Burt Lan­cast­er and Kirk Dou­glas)

Music

  • “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peg­gy Sue” (Bud­dy Hol­ly, Jer­ry Alli­son, and Nor­man Pet­ty)
  • “Great Balls of Fire” (Otis Black­well and Jack Ham­mer)
  • “Wake Up, Lit­tle Susie” (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant)
  • Elvis Presley’s hits: “All Shook Up” (Otis Black­well and Elvis Pres­ley) and “Jail­house Rock” (Jer­ry Leiber and Mike Stoller)
  • The musi­cal “West Side Sto­ry” (music by Leonard Bern­stein, lyrics by Stephen Sond­heim, and book by Arthur Lau­rents)

Art

  • Dali’s “Celes­tial Ride” and “Music: the Red Orches­tra”
  • Edward Hopper’s “West­ern Motel”
  • Picasso’s “Las Meni­nas” set of paint­ings

Under the cur­rent copy­right regime, you’ll have to wait anoth­er 39 years — until 2053 — before these works hit the com­mons.

You can find a longer list of 1957 works still under copy­right on Duke’s web­site.

Note: If you’re won­der­ing how many works of art entered the pub­lic domain in 2014, the answer is sim­ple: 0. As the Duke site notes, “Not a sin­gle pub­lished work” is enter­ing the pub­lic domain in 2014. “In fact, in the Unit­ed States, no pub­li­ca­tion will enter the pub­lic domain until 2019.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

Free Philip K. Dick: Down­load 13 Great Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ries

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Sherlock Holmes Is Now in the Public Domain, Declares US Judge

in Books, Law, Literature | December 27th, 2013

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Chief Judge Rubén Castil­lo of the Unit­ed States Dis­trict Court of the North­ern Dis­trict of Illi­nois has ruled that the char­ac­ters and sto­ry lines used in 50 Sher­lock Holmes texts pub­lished by Arthur Conan Doyle before Jan. 1, 1923 “are no longer cov­ered by Unit­ed States copy­right law and can be freely used by cre­ators with­out pay­ing any licens­ing fee to the Conan Doyle estate,” reports The New York Times. This gives con­tem­po­rary authors the abil­i­ty to write their own Sher­lock Holmes mys­tery sto­ries and keep con­tribut­ing to a rich tra­di­tion of detec­tive fic­tion. It would also seem­ing­ly put pre-1923 texts firm­ly in the pub­lic domain. (You can find The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes and oth­er relat­ed sto­ries in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions. ) Leslie S. Klinger, the edi­tor of The Com­plete Anno­tat­ed Sher­lock Holmes, who filed the civ­il suit, praised the judge’s deci­sion, say­ing “Peo­ple want to cel­e­brate Holmes and Wat­son, and now they can do that with­out fear.” Now it’s time for them to write some­thing that can hold a can­dle to what Conan Doyle cre­at­ed those many years ago.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

via Arts Beat

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Arthur Conan Doyle & The Cot­tin­g­ley Fairies: How Two Young Girls Fooled Sher­lock Holmes’ Cre­ator

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

Watch John Cleese as Sher­lock Holmes in The Strange Case of the End of Civ­i­liza­tion as We Know It

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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Discusses His Love for Reading Proust, and Why “Literature is Crucial to Any Democracy”

in Law, Literature | October 23rd, 2013

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Worth a quick note: The New York Review of Books has post­ed an intrigu­ing inter­view with Supreme Court Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er, who reflects on an impor­tant moment in his intel­lec­tu­al life — read­ing Mar­cel Proust’s À la recherche du temps per­du (In Search of Lost Time) for the very  first time … in French. Decades ago, while “work­ing as a legal intern at an Amer­i­can law firm in Paris,” Brey­er need­ed to improve his French. Read­ing through all sev­en vol­umes of Proust’s mon­u­men­tal work seemed like a good way to do it. 3,500 pages and 1.5 mil­lion words lat­er, Brey­er fin­ished. And then he re-read them again. The first vol­ume of the long nov­el, Swann’s Way, was pub­lished 100 years ago, in 1913. Asked why he still cher­ish­es Proust’s work so much, Brey­er had this to say:

It’s all there in Proust—all mankind! Not only all the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter types, but also every emo­tion, every imag­in­able sit­u­a­tion. Proust is a uni­ver­sal author: he can touch any­one, for dif­fer­ent rea­sons; each of us can find some piece of him­self in Proust, at dif­fer­ent ages.… What is most extra­or­di­nary about Proust is his abil­i­ty to cap­ture the sub­tlest nuances of human emo­tions, the slight­est vari­a­tions of the mind and the soul. To me, Proust is the Shake­speare of the inner world.

You can read the full inter­view at NYRB, which gets into to some fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tions, like Why is lit­er­a­ture cru­cial to a democ­ra­cy? and Does read­ing the US Con­sti­tu­tion hav­ing any­thing in com­mon with read­ing a great lit­er­ary work?

A hat tip goes to The New York­er’s Page Turn­er blog for call­ing this to our atten­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Lis­ten­ing to Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past, (Maybe) the Longest Audio Book Ever Made

Ray Brad­bury: Lit­er­a­ture is the Safe­ty Valve of Civ­i­liza­tion

Find Recherche in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Free French Lessons in Audio & Video

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Listen to Supreme Court Arguments on Prop 8 and DOMA Online

in Current Affairs, Law | March 27th, 2013

ernieThis week, the Supreme Court is hear­ing argu­ments about gay rights in Amer­i­ca. And, no mat­ter how the court decides, these cas­es will enter the his­to­ry books. Will the court lead the nation in mak­ing equal­i­ty avail­able for all, as it did dur­ing the civ­il rights era? Or will the nation be forced to lead the court into moder­ni­ty dur­ing the years ahead? That we will soon find out.

Usu­al­ly the court delays the release of audio record­ings of oral argu­ments. But, acknowl­edg­ing the impor­tance of these par­tic­u­lar cas­es, SCOTUS is mak­ing this week’s argu­ments imme­di­ate­ly avail­able. You can lis­ten to the debates over Prop. 8 here or below. DOMA argu­ments will appear here. And it’s also now below.

Prop 8

DOMA

“.

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What Should Have Entered the Public Domain in 2013?: Philip K. Dick, James Bond, Billie Holiday, Etc

in Law | March 21st, 2013

What entered the pub­lic domain in the US in 2013? It’s not a long answer, because the answer is .… noth­ing.

Now here’s a ques­tion that yields a longer answer. What books would have entered the pub­lic domain if we were still oper­at­ing under rea­son­able, pre-1978 copy­right laws? Here’s a lit­tle list that comes from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain:

  • Win­ston Churchill, A His­to­ry of the Eng­lish-Speak­ing Peo­ples
  • Philip K. Dick, Minor­i­ty Report
  • Ian Flem­ing, Dia­monds are For­ev­er (a James Bond nov­el)
  • Fred Gib­son, Old Yeller
  • Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lady Sings the Blues
  • Alan Lern­er, My Fair Lady
  • Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Jour­ney into Night
  • John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
  • Dodie Smith, 101 Dal­ma­tians

You can also add films to the list, like:

  • Hitch­cock­’s The Man Who Knew Too Much
  • The Searchers (direct­ed by John Ford and star­ring John Wayne)
  • The Ten Com­mand­ments (1956 ver­sion by Cecil B. DeMille, who also direct­ed a sim­i­lar film in 1923)
  • Around the World in 80 Days
  • Godzil­la, King of the Mon­sters!
  • The Best Things in Life are Free

And we should­n’t fail to men­tion that we could have had the first issue of MAD mag­a­zine, with Alfred E. Neu­man grac­ing the cov­er.

In the mean­time, if you’re won­der­ing what will hit the pub­lic domain in 2014, the answer is “noth­ing.” And you can keep repeat­ing that answer until 2019! That’s the next time some­thing new will enter Amer­i­ca’s cre­ative com­mons. Yet one more rea­son Con­gress’ approval rat­ing deserves to sit at 15%.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Lessig’s Last Speech on Free Cul­ture. Watch it Online.

Sup­port The Pub­lic Domain Review

Cre­ative Com­mons Announces “School of Open” with Cours­es to Focus on Dig­i­tal Open­ness

 

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Creative Commons Announces “School of Open” with Courses to Focus on Digital Openness

in Education, Law, Online Courses, Wikipedia | March 15th, 2013

Just in time to cel­e­brate Open Edu­ca­tion Week, here comes a new ini­tia­tive, the School of Open, a learn­ing envi­ron­ment focused on increas­ing our under­stand­ing of “open­ness” and the ben­e­fits it brings to cre­ativ­i­ty and edu­ca­tion in the dig­i­tal age.

Devel­oped by the col­lab­o­ra­tive edu­ca­tion plat­form Peer to Peer Uni­ver­si­ty (P2PU) with orga­ni­za­tion­al sup­port from Cre­ative Com­mons, the School of Open aims to spread under­stand­ing of the pow­er of this brave new world through free online class­es.

We hear about it all the time: Uni­ver­sal access to research, edu­ca­tion and culture—all good things, with­out a doubt—made pos­si­ble by things like open source soft­ware, open edu­ca­tion­al resources and the like.

But what are these var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties and what do they mean? How can we all learn more and get involved?

School of Open has rolled the con­ver­sa­tion back to square one so that under­stand­ing the basics is easy. Through a list of new cours­es cre­at­ed by users and experts, peo­ple can learn more about what “open­ness” means and how to apply it. There are stand-alone cours­es on copy­right, writ­ing for Wikipedia, the col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­ron­ment of open sci­ence, and the process behind mak­ing open video.

These free cours­es start March 18 (sign up by click­ing the “start course” but­ton by Sun­day, March 17):

These free cours­es are open for you to take at any time:

The approach at P2PU encour­ages peo­ple to work togeth­er, assess one another’s work, and pro­vide con­struc­tive feed­back. It’s a great place to learn how to design your own course, because the design process is bro­ken down step-by-step, and course con­tent is vet­ted by users and P2PU staff. The tuto­r­i­al shows you how the process works.

P2PU is also a place to learn more about what is open con­tent and what is not. Par­tic­i­pants in the ongo­ing course Open Detec­tive learn to iden­ti­fy open source media and then demon­strate mas­tery by mak­ing some­thing of their own using only open con­tent. What if you’re real­ly, real­ly proud of the resource you cre­ate in Open Detec­tive? Take it to the next lev­el and get a Cre­ative Com­mons license to make your work avail­able with­out giv­ing up full copy­right. You guessed it, there’s a course for that too.

Open Edu­ca­tion Week is in full swing (through Mon­day the 18th). There’s a full sched­ule of webi­na­rs to check out, includ­ing dis­cus­sions about the impli­ca­tions of open access for polit­i­cal struc­tures like the World Bank, and the impact of open, glob­al teach­ing in Syr­ia.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Total Noob to Learn­ing Online? P2PU’s Peer-to-Peer Cours­es Hold Your Hand

700 Free Online Cours­es

A Meta List of MOOCs

What Entered the Pub­lic Domain in 2013? Zip, Nada, Zilch!

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site at .

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Michael Sandel’s Famous Harvard Course on Justice Launches as a MOOC on Tuesday

in Harvard, Law, MOOCs, Philosophy | March 10th, 2013

Back in 2009, Har­vard polit­i­cal philoso­pher Michael Sandel made his course, Jus­tice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, avail­able on the web for free (YouTube — iTunes — Web). Sud­den­ly life­long learn­ers around the world had access to a pop­u­lar course enjoyed by more than 14,000 Har­vard stu­dents over 30 years. Start­ing this Tues­day, Sandel plans to offer Jus­tice as a free course through edX, the provider of MOOCs (or Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) cre­at­ed by Har­vard and MIT. And here’s one thing you can guar­an­tee: In a sin­gle offer­ing, Sandel will bring his course to more stu­dents world­wide than he did through his decades teach­ing at Har­vard. You can enroll and reserve your free seat here. Stu­dents who receive a pass­ing grade in the course can earn a cer­tifi­cate of mas­tery, which will bear the name Har­vardX.

Jus­tice has been added to our every grow­ing list of MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wal­ter Lewin, the Orig­i­nal Star of Open Edu­ca­tion, Returns with a Brand New Physics MOOC

Get Ready for MIT’s “Intro­duc­tion to Biol­o­gy: The Secret of Life” on edX

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

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