AssortedStuff

As part of the planning for our iPod Touch experiment here in the overly-large school district we’ve been running many of the details past the Division Counsel (aka the district lawyer).

Why? Well, because… we always do that for anything out of the ordinary. It’s the American way.

Anyway, in one of the notes from the Counsel’s office she asked an interesting question: Is the iPod Touch a computer?

The query is all part of their effort to make sure that our plans keep the system in compliance with CIPA (Children’s Internet Protection Act), a federal law dictating student technology use in schools.

So, the first reflex would be to answer “yes, the Touch (and many similar devices) are computers”.

However, after rolling the question around in my warped little mind for a while, I recalled the motto of Sun Microsystems:

The Network is the Computer

Which is an even more valid concept today than when they first started using it in the early 90′s.

After all, it’s been a long time since a device controlled by a microprocessor was worth much without a network connection.

So, I’m going out on a limb here and change my answer: No, the iPod Touch is not a computer.

A computer is all the people you can connect to and share information with using a networked device.

Do you think the lawyers will buy that?

No, me neither.

[Network image created at Top Twitter Friends]

ipod touch, legal, network, olsd

Here’s yet another discussion-with-lawyers about fair use as it applies to blogging and other forms of web publishing.

Some traditional media companies (the AP, for example) are not happy with sites using even small pieces of their content, probably because the link back doesn’t produce much if any profits.

And the fact they generally have a bigger legal team than the rest of us means that, even if they’re wrong, they have the muscle to intimidate a settlement in their favor.

Probably the biggest problem with trying to determine what’s “fair use”, especially for those of us in education, is that the concept is very vaguely defined in American law.

At the risk of making someone at the Times legal department upset, here’s a clip from their article that hits right at what needs to be done.

Courts have not provided much of an answer. In the United States, the copyright law provides a four-point definition of fair use, which takes into consideration the purpose (commercial vs. educational) and the substantiality of the excerpt.

But editors in search of a legal word limit are sorely disappointed. Even before the Internet, lawyers lamented that the fair use factors “didn’t map well onto real life,” said Mr. Ardia, whose Citizen Media Law Project is part of the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. “New modes of creation, reuse, mixing and mash-ups made possible by digital technologies and the Internet have made it even more clear that Congress’s attempt to define fair use is woefully inadequate.”

Almost the entire intellectual property system in the US needs a major overhaul.

However, one of the first topics Congress needs to address is writing a fair, balanced, and specific definition of fair use into law.

Cory Doctorow explains much better than I can why all of this is important, not just to avoid being sued, but for sustaining a vibrant and growing culture.

copyright, fair use, legal, media

For those of you not into geek culture, you may not be aware that the trial of the century is now going on in Sweden.

The big content companies are trying to shut down a site called The Pirate Bay (that link is not likely to work at school), which is basically nothing more than a big database that directs users to bit torrent files all over the world.

The court, however, is having a hard time comprehending the people running the site and it’s no wonder with this kind of business process.

The prosecution’s mind is blown by the chaotic, free-wheeling way TPB is run as they try to divine who’s really in charge : “Someone must ultimately decide whether to put up a certain text or graphic.” TPB’s Fredrik Neij replies, “Why? If someone believes a new text is needed, he just inputs it. Or if a graphic is ugly, someone makes a better one. The one who wants to do something just does it.”

Pretty much the opposite of bureaucracy.

copyright, legal, piracy, pirate bay

Back in the pre-digital age, if I bought a record, video tape, or book, it came with the legal right to sell or give it to someone if I chose to.

This is known as the “first-sale” doctrine and was first recognized by the US Supreme Court one hundred years ago. In 1976 the concept was written into copyright law.

Fast forward to 2009 and consider the same situation with digital media.

Do you have the same “first-sale” rights for a music download, video file, or audio book? What about software, a medium which certainly had no equivalent to the formats considered by the Court or Congress?

The ease with which digital copies can be produced adds many new layers to the concept of media “ownership”. Do you still own that music download or are you only leasing it?

DRM, the effort by producers to lock the files, and the DMCA, which makes it illegal to break those locks, only makes things more complicated.

Ars Technica has a good overview of the issues involved in bringing copyright into the digital age but don’t read the article looking for answers to the many questions.

That’s going to require some major revisions to copyright law and the concept of “first-sale” in the very near future.

copyright, dmca, drm, legal, media

As with most major news stories, there’s been very little information and a whole lot of opinion provided by the news media about the financial crisis, making it very hard to get a grasp on what’s going on.

I don’t know much about economics so I’m depending on the sources I normally trust to help me understand the mess, although most of them are also claiming limited knowledge on the subject.

However, you don’t need to know anything about the financial markets to read the text of the proposed bailout bill and be very concerned about it, especially section 8.

Decisions by the Secretary [of the Treasury] pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Remember, this bill was written by the same members of the W administration who were supposed to be responsible for making sure stuff like this didn’t happen.

Who looked the other way while all of the economic crap was building up and their friends were taking away truck loads of cash for themselves.

In the case of this particular “fix”, you don’t need to know economics.

You only need to have been paying attention over the past eight years to know that trusting these folks to fix anything with no oversight or review, stinks.

economy, legal, politics

Wednesday is Constitution Day, the anniversary of the date on which the document at the core of our governmental system was signed in 1787.

If you’re a teacher, did you know that your school is required by federal law to teach about the Constitution each year on September 17th?

In 2004, Robert Byrd, the very senior Senator from West Virginia, stuck on the end of an appropriations bill the requirement for “all schools that receive federal funds — universities included — to provide a program on the Constitution each year on or about Sept. 17″.

Ok, that’s very nice.

However, shouldn’t we be teaching the contents of this very important document more often than once a year?

Not to mention about how it has evolved – and been distorted and corrupted by a wide variety of politicians – over these past 221 years.

constitution, legal, schools

Congress is back in session so it’s time to keep an eye on your fair use rights.

This time around they’re working on a new law which would direct the Justice Department to do the job now being done by lawyers for the RIAA and MPAA.

The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 would allow the federal government to bring civil suits against people accused of “stealing” intellectual property.

The government also gets expanded powers to seize computers and other equipment and any damages they obtain will be turned over to big media, instead of going into the US treasury as usually happens when the feds win a case.

Another bonus is the creation of a “federal copyright czar” (with the accompanying bureaucracy) to run the whole show and be a liaison with countries where abuse of American copyright law is “rampant”.

I wonder which lobbyist for the media trade associations will get that plum position. You can bet it would never go to anyone with “consumer advocate” in their resume.

Fortunately, there are some groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, fighting back.

In a letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, a coalition of library associations and consumer advocacy groups criticized the bill, warning that an “unbalanced approach to enforcement would lead to unintended harms” that could stifle innovation. The letter blasted the law’s civil enforcement provisions as an “enormous gift of federal resources to large copyright owners with no demonstration that the copyright owners are having difficulties enforcing their own rights.” It also raised privacy concerns about the legislation’s civil forfeiture language, noting that the seizure of servers or other large digital storage devices, often holding data belonging to multiple users, could compromise sensitive personal information.

Some changes to the law are being considered which, hopefully, will make it harder for the FBI to begin raiding the houses of grandmothers (or invading the countries) suspected of piracy.

But there’s still the question of whether our federal law enforcement agencies should be spending their time and money to take over for RIAA lawyers, who have done a pretty lousy job of proving their case.

Meanwhile, there are other intellectual property bills, written by big media and being pushed by their Congress critters, being considered.

Pay attention.

congess, copyright, eff, intellectual property, legal

Real Networks (are they still around?) is trying to make itself relevant again by releasing a $30 program that will allow users to make digital copies of their DVDs.

With some restrictions to appease the big media companies, of course.

The software, which will go on sale on Real.com and Amazon.com this month, will allow buyers to make one copy of a DVD, playable only on the computer where it was made. The user can transfer that copy to up to five other Windows computers, but only by buying additional copies of the software for $20 each. The software does not work on high-definition Blu-ray discs, which the movie industry has even more aggressively sought to protect from illicit copying.

No thanks. Handbrake and other open source programs will do the same thing at no cost with no restrictions.

However, the larger point is that the restrictions Real’s software imposes shouldn’t be necessary.

I paid for the media. I should have the right to view it on any device I like without paying additional fees or getting permission from anyone.

Real, this program, and the whines that come from the MPAA about people “stealing” their content are all irrelevant.

legal, media, mpaa, rights, software

A woman is suing Apple for false advertising regarding the qualities of the new iPhone, specifically that it’s not “twice as fast” as claimed by the smoothing talking announcer on TV.

Ok. On that basis I’m launching a class action suit against the entire consumer tech industry.

For that matter, let’s include all the edtech vendors as well.

With few exceptions, you’d be hard pressed to find any of their products that live up to the ads.

advertising, edtech, legal

Lawrence Lessig blogs some “huge and important news” about Creative Commons and other open source licensing systems.

In essence, a Federal Appeals court has ruled that they are valid and enforceable.

In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.

I don’t understand all the legalese behind what the court decided, which is why I read Lessig in the first place.

He’s the expert and if he’s “very very happy”, that must be good for all of us who use CC, both as creators and consumers.

copyright, creative commons, lawrence lessig, legal