As technology makes copying easier and better, areas which once were set aside as copyright free zones are finding their way back to the courts.
Databases: In the past, collections of facts or data have been left largely unprotected. Except for arrangement, which is protected, data has been free because of the desire to avoid granting a monopoly right in facts. Baseball statistics certainly fall under this area, but have the added element of the players’ work and personality (which are claimed to be tied in to the stats). Usually this type of protection falls under privacy, but it’s hard to see how public baseball games could apply here. It almost seems as though it is the use of this collection of the data what the leauges see as the problem. The use of one statistic couldn’t be protected, but perhaps when grouped together… (the work, or “sweat of the brow” in gathering statistics hasn’t been protected in the past).
Time shifting: Recording a television or show to view later has been protected since the Sony Betamax case. While the courts rejected the idea of “space shifting” in the mp3.com case, an XM Radio recorder is now coming under fire. The difference here is that digital material is easier to copy and creates nearly perfect copies.
These decisions could have a great impact on the scope of what users can do, and what creators can protect.
A recent editorial on student’s legal rights and responsibilities in their MySpace and Facebook entries gives an excellent overview of how the courts have construed students’ speech rights when in the public classroom.
However, a comment struck me as interesting from the perspective of applying mass communication law to all of society.
Students need to remember that the law applies in cyberspace too: Threats and harassment are just as illegal online as offline. Defamation or libel can occur on the Internet as well as in a printed newspaper.
I start to scratch my head when a lawyer says that anyone “needs to remember” about a law that they’ve probably rarely heard about and that their parents most likely never were responsible for. Yes, the law is there and for good reason; but will the public accept laws which might be outside their moral framework or that they never have had a chance to debate and have a say in? Is it OK that “As a private entity, MySpace isn’t obligated to honor users’ First Amendment rights”? The struggle between protecting individual speech and protecting individual reputation has become so much more complex thanks to the Internet.
Perhaps we should all heed the advice that I recently heard given to bloggers: “Get libel insurance.”
I’m struck by the contrast in two stories appearing in today’s news
NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting network, is coming under pressure to start putting video content online (albeit for a fee). While in my country, C-Span, the non-profit network “created by cable, offered as a public service,” asked that videos of Colbert’s White House Correspondents Diner speech be removed from YouTube.com (and later agreed to have the material hosted on Google Video).
I’ll admit, the comparison doesn’t totally gel. NHK requires viewers to pay a subscription fee, and would likely do the same for videos on the Net. C-Span is funded through cable subscription fees. Yet both networks seem to have some element of both publicness and privateness to what they do; both are involved in the creation of cultural (and democratic) artifacts.
Without getting in to what is the “right” thing for either to do, what is interesting to me is the drive people feel to share this sort of material. If the amount of Japanese language videos on YouTube is any indication, there is truly interest in sharing this content across cultures. As with many of the other things I blog about, it comes down to a question of control. Is there any sort of public ownership right in content produced by government (directly, by subsidy, or otherwise)?
It recently occurred to me that Apple’s name was noticeably absent from the list of companies supporting Internet neutrality (or perhaps I’ve just missed it). As a provider of iTunes music and videos, as well as software updates, it seemed to me as though their bandwidth needs would be a prime candidate for higher tiered service.
A few days ago, the Apple rumor mill turned out a theory that Apple would bundle bittorrent in the next version of their operating system. Users would get credit (perhaps on iTunes) for sharing their harddrive space and bandwidth to serve tiny bits of Apple content, like music, videos, and updates.
This would essentially remove the need for them to sign up for a higher tier of service, because their serving needs would be completely distributed in terms of time, space, and bandwidth. While this has been around for years in the linux world, building a commercial model on this technology would be a fascinating innovation.
