] Thus, at least according to this court, the more uncommon
] (and provocative) the context of the remixing, the less
] likely it is legal. Of course, this raises the question
] of how new contexts can ever become legal. Presumably, at
] some point in history, no one framed art. Then the first
] person came along and put a painting in a frame. Under
] the theories in Mirage and Munoz, that person would have
] been historically guilty of copyright infringement
] because the context of their remix was uncommon at the
] time.

This article is interesting and also deeply troubling. Apparently recontextualization of someone else's artistic work is a copyright infringement EVEN IF YOU PAID for the copy that you are recontextualizing unless there is a specific fair use exception. This is copyright law preventing artistic expression for no financial reason, but strictly to prevent expression.

LawGeek: We fought the Kuleshov effect and The Law won?

] If King remains a one-dimensional grainy black-and-white
] figure who utters the same sunny sound bite year after
] year until it's a cliche, it's because news networks
] won't pay for more, and researchers have been kept from
] delving deep into his papers to tell us something new
] about the Martin Luther King the man, not the statuette.
]
] And his family wants it that way.

And once again we are promoting science and the useful arts by creating economic incentives for people to engage in historical events by preventing people from talking about them.

You need a license to quote Martin Luther King Jr. (phillyBurbs.com)

] "Piracy is like terrorism today and it exists everywhere
] and it is a very dangerous phenomenon."

Coming soon: "Trademark dilution is the greatest threat that faces mankind today."

Intellectual property piracy is form of terrorism: WIPO chief

] City Music, also in Indianapolis, was raided the
] following week. "They came in and took anything that was
] on a recordable CD," manager Jerome Avery says. "The only
] DJ mixes I had were behind the counter for personal
] listening, and they confiscated them. How can it be
] illegal if the artist is making them for the street? They
] came without a notice - no warrant, no nothing.
] They're making up their own laws, if you ask me."
]
] The City Music raid happened on October 1, the day the
] enormous Universal Music Group's new prices went into
] effect - more bad news for small, independent record
] stores. Universal's widely publicized $9.09 wholesale
] prices only apply to the largest retail chains, and only
] to stores that are willing to buy 30 copies of a disc at
] one time. Most smaller stores, though, deal with
] "one-stop" sub-distributors that can fill orders for a
] disc or two quickly, and take a markup of their own. And
] many retailers are frustrated that customers have been
] coming in for weeks, asking where their $9 CDs are.
]
] Eric Haight of Record World in Petoskey, Michigan, notes
] that a new Sting album before the price drop cost the
] store $12.69, with a suggested retail price of $18.98.
] Now it costs them $10.79, with a retail price of
] $12.98 - the profit margin has been slashed by almost
] two-thirds, and Universal will no longer help them out
] with advertising costs. "I think their motives are
] suspect," Haight says. "This won't affect the Best Buys
] of the world, but I can't see our store making it through
] 2004."

RIAA raiding small music stores for selling DJ mix CDs

SunnComm drops its lawsuit.. That was quick.

] Jacobs said in an interview late last night that a
] successful lawsuit would do little to reverse the damage
] done by the paper Halderman published Monday about his
] research, and any suit would likely hurt the research
] community by making computer scientists think twice about
] researching copy-protection technology.
]
] "I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of
] chilling effect on research," Jacobs said.

] I just thought about it and decided it was more important
] not to be one of those people. The harm's been done . . . if I
] can't accomplish anything [with a lawsuit] I don't want to
] leave a wake," he said.

The Daily Princetonian - Threat of lawsuit passes for student

] The landscape has not changed so much that if you had a
] vote taken today, even with all the horror stories of
] RIAA subpoenas sent to grandmothers and honor students,
] the vote would come out in favor of seriously altering or
] removing" that section of the law, Godwin said. "I think
] what you are getting is some impulse, somewhat more
] strongly from the Republican side of the aisle, toward
] some slightly higher level of judicial review and some
] safeguards and remedies for misuse of process."

The DMCA supeonas are a way of removing judicial oversight (and therefore the rule of law) from the information collection phase of intellectual property proceedings. Congress has shown a repeated interest in removing the rule of law from the equation when it benefits their friends in the media industry. Some Republicans are starting to point out that the DMCA supeonas can be used (and abused) by other people, some of whom Congress doesn't like. This is a good thing in general because this law needs to be tightened up. Fortunately its unconstituional for the goverment to give a specific interest group a special right, so they are going to have to lock this thing down across the board. The RIAA offers the same sort of non-technical, and therefore irrelevant response that you're seeing to questions about the security of voting machines. That means they are wrong, and are probably going to loose. This is progress.

Congress starts to look critically at the DMCA

] The music industry has turned its big legal guns on
] Internet music-swappers - including a 12-year-old
] New York City girl who thought downloading songs was fun.
]
] Brianna LaHara said she was frightened to learn she was
] among the hundreds of people sued yesterday by giant
] music companies in federal courts around the country.

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - 12-Year-Old Sued for Music Downloading

Comments from Decius:

The RIAA's Clean Slate program.

This website is positively creepy. I guess they are holding it under a different domain name so that people who are basically not very bright won't get that these are the same people that are filing the lawsuits. Having said that, reading explanations of "what your liability might be" knowing that the writer is the person filing the suit feels like listening to the mafia explain in a concerned and polite tone that you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your family and the best way to avoid that is to pay the protection money. I realize thats been said before, but I can't think of a better way to explain it.

Typical corrupt logic abounds:

Upfront on the site is says that copying music is just as illegal as stealing CDs, which is correct. Its also just as illegal as running a red light, or on the other hand, committing international terrorism. This analogy is chosen for another reason, which they shore up deeper in the content by saying that copying music is just as "wrong" as stealing CDs... The typical obligatory and incorrect analogy between theft and information crimes. Later the site says that theft of physical CDs is "legally no different" then copying music. In reality, the penalty for copying music is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more severe.

Parents are literally set against their children through the use of fear. "You could be liable for your child's actions, so start monitoring their computer use..."

"Tell that to the struggling young musicians in a garage band who can’t get signed because record sales are down." Sure... Your friend's band isn't getting signed because of Gnutella... Right...

Their list of places to "legally download music on the web" is mostly (although not entirely) a list of internet CD stores.

"Copyrights don’t last forever." No, they DO last forever. Limited copyright is a legal fiction in the United States. The definition of fiction is something written on paper that doesn't actually happen in the real world. I am 27. No copyrighted material has entered the public domain during my lifetime. Repeat after me: If it doesn't actually happen, then it is not real.

"We are not against P2P services." Really, you could have fooled me at the P2P "porno" hearings last week!! From NYT: "P2P stands for piracy to pornography," quipped Mr. Lack. (That's "Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment.")

"We think MP3 technology is a great thing—as long as it’s used legally and properly." REALLY!? Then why did you sue to ban the sale of portable mp3 players in 1998??
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,15535,00.html

musicunited.org

] Heads up, sharers of music, video and software files: If
] a prominent Michigan lawmaker has his way on Capitol
] Hill, you will soon be a felon.
]
] U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Detroit Democrat, is the
] sponsor of the Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner
] Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003, which
] declares sharing a single copyrighted file online to be a
] felony.
]
] Because the bill doesn't specifically name the type of
] file, you could theoretically become a felon by copying
] and posting this very column on your Web site. (We frown
] on that sort of thing anyway, but webmasters, be warned.)
]
] Giving fake information to the folks who register domain
] names, the basic Internet Web addresses (such as
] freep.com), would be punishable by up to five years in
] prison and a fine. Using a camcorder to record a movie in
] a theater -- whether you share it or not -- would be a
] federal criminal offense.

HEATHER NEWMAN: 60 million file sharers could face prison, fine

] When I mentioned in last week's column that I would this
] week be writing about a legal way to do a successful
] music downloading business -- a business that would
] threaten the Recording Industry Association of America
] and its hegemony -- dozens of readers wrote to me trying
] to predict what I would write. Some readers came at the
] problem from a purely technical perspective, ignoring the
] fact that the real issues here aren't technical but
] legal. Some readers took a legal approach, but they
] tended to ignore the business model. Some were looking
] solely for the business model. Interestingly, nobody
] even came close to my idea, which makes me either a total
] loon or a diabolical genius. Truth be told, I'm probably
] more of a diabolical loon.
]
]
] The reason I am even writing this column is two-fold.
] The biggest reason is simply because I would like people
] to consider lateral solutions to problems. I am pushing
] the concept of problem solving in a new way. There is no
] particular methodology here, just the underlying concept
] that if things aren't working the way you like, think of
] something different. Too often, people restrict their
] thinking or they somehow expect the world to change just
] for them, which it won't. But taking a lateral approach
] often yields interesting results. And once you've found
] an approach, maybe it can be applied to a different
] problem. What I am abo

Cringely's crazy idea