I wouldn't steal...

We read in "Copyrights and Copywrongs" that Mark Twain once said, "a day would come when, in the eyes of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life." That's a funny quote, but it's one of many that demonstrate a mentality of conflating physical property and intellectual property. Of course, probably the most pronounced appearance of this conflation in present day is those annoying anti-piracy ads that run before movies, that talk about all the things you wouldn't steal. You wouldn't steal a car, a purse, why would you steal a movie?

I was thinking about that when I ran across this video made by (I believe) a European political party called "The Greens." It's an interesting take on that premise.



Incidentally, (two for the price of one!) the plot of that ad reminds me of another ad I've seen, that also borrows heavily from a cultural institution. I imagine everybody has already seen this one, but in case you haven't, this Coke ad is pretty well done.

Garfield the firecat

This is on the door of a firehouse near campus. I'm just guessing they didn't get the permission of UPI, or whoever controls the rights to license Garfield -- but, then again, who's got the chutzpah to risk the PR debacle of
suing a NYC fire dept in the post-9/11 world?

It's the fake thing, baby.

Somehow this ended up on my personal blog, whoops!



Photo courtesy of http://www.gemagema.tv

Saturday was my cousin's birthday and every year her grandparents (my aunt and uncle) take her to Canal street to blow her money on purses, jewlery and other goods. I happen to live in chinatown and get to see the inner workings of the fake bag industry that is so popular.

What didn't know was that some bags are "trademarked" and some styles are "copyrighted" while others are not. For instance, you can easily find a Dolce & Gabbana bag hanging from the rafters of the tiny shops, complete with an authentic looking stamp/embroidery/plaque and what have you. It's completely legal to take their bag style and their name and appropriate it for your own monetary gain.

To get coveted brands or even bag styles such as Coach, Burberry, Chanel, Gucci and Prada you have to duck behind secret doors hidden in the walls, or follow questionable salespeople down shady looking aisles to the trunk of a car. It's possible to be arrested for buying and selling these bags (but not for owning or being in possession of them, oddly enough).

I knew that the illegal bag ring was popular, but I was more surprised by the fact that it's legal to sell fake bags that have a fake brand on them.

This leads me to the thought that copyright is more of a bureaucratic program for monetary gain than it is just an inherent right. Obviously Dolce & Gabbana have either not copyrighted and trademarked their intellectual property, or the entirety of the fake bag industry is being callous and daring.

I'm the Juggernaut Bitch

In my Ad. and Society class last semester my professor showed us this clip from "X-Men 3" to demonstrate how online audience parody's can become apart of the mainstream films thanks to websites like youtube. http://youtube.com/watch?v=k9hFqKCSXaY&feature=related. The line "I'm the juggernaut bitch" came from this very popular online video http://youtube.com/watch?v=zgAPFKDL6Sg . 

When I first saw this in class I thought it was great that audiences can now contribute to production, but now I am wondering if film producers had any rights to this quote. Do Randy Hayes and Xavier Nazario, the online video creators, have exclusive rights to that quote or do the rules change since they posted it on youtube? I could see this getting a bit tricky since they didn't create the work on their own, just dubbed sound over it, but the film makers are profiting off of thier idea. Blogs about this video have comments from users who are thrilled that producers used that line. This video from a theater shows the audience cheering when the juggernaut says that line. http://youtube.com/watch?v=4w74h4VyC0E&feature=related. If Hayes and Nazario did lose their rights to the quote by putting it on youtube then how does that help stimulate the incentive to create? If I make a great video, put it up on youtube get thousands of hits, then some producer comes, rips me off, and makes a ton of profit without giving me any credit why should I bother to put the video up in the first place?

A Note on Illegal Downloading

Multiple times per day, I log into NYUHome and each time I see a link under the "ITS News and Alerts" tabs.  It says "A Note on Illegal Downloading" and so I recently clicked it.  Here is what it says:

A large percentage of people who use the Internet have downloaded music or movies. And most of the individuals who download these files—through paid services, file-sharing applications, or peer-to-peer networks—by now are aware of how prominent the issue of illegal downloading has become.

The University's stance on this issue is simple: downloading copyrighted material without permission is illegal, and you should not do it. You should also not use your computer to distribute copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder. Be aware: some applications for downloading music, movies and other files actually turn your computer into a server, allowing it to be used for distributing copyrighted material. If you are doing illegal downloads or distributions now or have done so, you should stop.

The music industry thus far has principally targeted those whose computers distribute illegally downloaded music, rather those who simply download. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is using the legal tools provided by the U. S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. If the RIAA believes you are involved in illegal downloads or distribution of copyrighted materials and submits a valid subpoena to NYU seeking your identity, the University will comply with the subpoena and furnish your name and contact information to the RIAA's lawyers.

We know that illegal downloading of music is a widespread practice. It has become an international phenomenon, one that is hardly confined to college campuses. Its allure is clear: why would you pay for something—a song to load on your MP3 player or a movie to load on your laptop—when you can get it for free with a little exploration and few keystrokes? And why would you not share something for free with friends?

In answering those questions, the University appeals to what Abraham Lincoln once called "the better angels" of your nature and to your commitment to the culture of scholarship.

As communities of scholars and learners, research universities—such as NYU—have two primary missions: to educate students and to create knowledge. This latter mission involves the production of original scholarship and research. Accordingly it is accompanied by an enormous respect for proper recognition being given to the creator of those ideas and knowledge. In higher education, it is considered a grave act to take another's work without permission or attribution. At NYU, which also has large and renowned programs in the arts, this respect extends to the creation of new art.

Few in this community would uphold shoplifting CDs from a record store. And few would be content to see their own work—a paper, for instance, or a journal article, or a term project in a course—taken by someone else and used without permission.

Yet, in reality, that is what you do when you download copyrighted files illegally. However you may feel about the music or film industry or about their responses to piracy, when you download copyrighted files without permission, you are stealing the work of a director or a producer or an artist. It is not only wrong, it puts you at legal risk.

The Internet has brought unimaginable access to information and extraordinary flexibility and opportunities for exploration and communication. NYU wants you to take advantage of all that. But, just as you abide by certain standards of behavior for scholarship and for University life, so, too, should you abide by high standards when it comes to the intellectual property of others on the Internet.

March 2007

What surprised me was not the general spirit of the message - its predictability was probably why I hadn't clicked the link before.  I was surprised that in one paragraph the message claims that in pursuit of scholarship and creativity, we must pay respects where they are due.  I understand that argument, but in the very next paragraph, illegal downloading is equated to stealing CDs from a record store.  The problem with this logic is that downloading music and stealing CDs are different.  The argument does not account for the difference and evolution of technology, which is why the topic is even an issue.

I'll reserve my judgment about the fact that, if subpoenaed, NYU will turn over our names and contact information to the RIAA's attorneys.  At this point, I'd rather hear other people's opinions.

Another funny coincidence I found when was poking around the ITS website was a warning about a phony email that asks people to send sensitive information in reply - it's called a phishing scam.  It's funny that in the body of the e-mail hoax, the culprits made sure to include copyright protection at the bottom of the e-mail!  It appears that they did so to make the e-mail seem more credible, that when people see the "Copyright 2008" on things, they are subconsciously acknowledging their legitimacy.  I find it interesting that the idea of copyright has this influence over people.  It might be evidence of Vaidhyanathan's argument that copyright is becoming less something that people can interact with and more of a symbol for arcane legal jargon.

"Before Models Can Turn Around, Knockoffs Fly"

I read this article in the New York Times a while ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04fashion.html

I thought it was a really interesting example of how copyright issues really do pervade society. The article discusses fashion designers and the bargain clothing retailers, such as Forever 21, who copy their designs. It notes that clothing isn't currently protected by copyright and that the Council of Fashion Designers of America is seeking to change this.

See this picture from the article. The two dresses are not exactly identical: the sleeves are different. However, most people would probably agree that the dress on the right is a copy of the one on the left.

As we mentioned in our class readings, copyright covers specific expressions but not the underlying ideas of those expressions. It is difficult to determine exactly what a "specific expression" is in regards to clothing. Is it a certain combination of colors, patterns, materials, and cuts that make something qualify as a "specific expression"? When does copying these aspects of an article of clothing become too much? After all, all fashion has some degree of copying. That's how trends start.

you pay for, the real author complies, they put your name on it, but its still a matter of copyright? hmm.

The other day a friend of mine shared a conversation involving herself and another friend. The conversation involved a piece of knowledge known to some sneaky students as elephantessays.com, a website that charges you a standard rate per page on any topic  you need an original essay written on. You offer your assignment and your focus, a deadline, and your credit card number, and a graduate student somewhere in the country contacts you personally, and writes you an original research paper, while (this is the "legal" catch) offering to put your name at the top. In other words, they do not care about receiving credit for the essay -- in fact they did the work just because the topic seemed of interest to them, or was a subject that they already consider themselves an expert in, or, just needed the extra money. So, while a university would still consider this an instance of plagiarism, it is not as if the student stole the work and put his/her name on it without having permission to do so-- so it is not really an instance copyright. 

Or is it?

What is, then, the real difference between plagiarism and copyright?

copyright

When we were talking about music copyright I remembered this song we talked about in class in High School that this composer would perform on stage where he basically just sat at the piano for a certain amount of time, not playing. He named the song after that amount of time. I can't remember the pianist's name or the name of the song....does anyone know what I'm talking about? I tried googling it, but it's sort of a tough thing to google. Basically his point was that anything could be considered a piece of music.
This song came to mind because I feel like it would be hard, if not impossible to copyright. It is essentially just silence, which obviously already exists. If someone else had a song where there was a pause for that amount of time, would it be copyright infringement on the original?

Clothing Designs as IP?

The other day I was shopping for a dress at Macy's and had narrowed my choices down to two. Classic little black dress, and then another that was a little more bold. Now, I was by myself so I decided I needed a second opinion... I walked to the mirror right outside of the dressing room, whipped out my camera phone, and like two seconds later a saleswoman came storming over telling me that I could not take pictures of the merchandise. Had I just stayed in the dressing room, there would have been no way for her to know that I was taking the picture... Maybe that's why the lighting in there is so messed up.

What's up with that?

Oh Viacom...

A fun story...

My RA was recently telling me how, one afternoon a few days ago, he was hanging out at the MTV studios with some friends who worked there. They were going to have a geography competition on TRL that afternoon, and needed more people to participate (makes sense, since no one has watched TRL since 1998...). He volunteered, signed something, and ended up winning the competition and won a trip to Egypt for four days, leaving this Saturday. Obviously, he was excited and wanted his friends and family to see him on TV winning, so he posted the clip of the show on YouTube, and made the mistake of putting MTV in the filename. Only hours later, Viacom had removed the video from YouTube, citing copyright violation. He reposted it later, removing MTV from the filename (I don't know if it's still up or not), but it was very interesting that it took Viacom only hours to find his clip and remove it. That, and the fact that it must be the singular job of one person to search websites like YouTube for copyrighted material belonging to their company...boring, interesting, well paid, minimum wage...I wonder what kind of job it is?

The Piracy Singularity is Near

I just came across Raymond Kutzweil's 2005 book 'The Singularity Is Near', which is a somewhat kooky futurist tract about how the human race will replace itself with machine intelligence in the very near future. I find most of it to be bogus, but the basic premise of his prognostications has yet to be refuted: digital technology develops at an exponential rate. That means pretty soon it will be developing at a rate of infinity: thus, the 'Singularity. ' (See also: "Moore's Law")

We don't have to buy his argument to be in awe of the potential of rapidly developing information technologies. The ones most relevant to copyright issues-especially in the film business-- are bandwidth and storage. Both have, so far, continued to increase at an exponential rate since the birth of the computer. Right now, high-end users see their connection speeds growing at 50% a year. As bandwidth and storage increases, so does the ease of piracy.


Right now, piracy represents a relatively small portion of the film business. This is mostly due to the fact that pirating things is a hassle. There are two types of people in the world: those with more time than money, and those with more money than time. College students, who usually have little money but a lot of bandwidth are the biggest pirates. They have the time to cruise Torrent sites and don't mind waiting two days to get a movie if it means that they get it for free. Most people just fork over the cash and get their product neatly packaged.

But what will happen when connection speeds are so fast that a film can be downloaded almost instantaneously, and hard drives are so big that whole libraries of films can be downloaded instantaneously and stored on a small device? The time/money equation no longer applies.

If one looks forward into our ultra-high-speed future, the battle over copyright will evolve into an all-out battle over control of the internet. Pirates will launch rogue sites and quickly distribute huge amounts of content before they are shut down- only to pop up at another address. Google will probably have to censor such sites from their search results. How much control is it possible, or acceptable, for the government to exert over the internet?

Then there is the DRM battle, which will continue to pit hackers against ex-hackers hired by large companies to protect their content. Any digital protection can be broken, but companies have the resources and the will to keep coming up with new ones. It will be an increasingly heavy financial burden for them, and it may be a never-ending battle.

Conclusion: the copyright issue may well have less to do with a battle in the courts than a practical battle against the reality of piracy in a high-speed world.

Excellent!!

Hopefully everyone has seen Wayne's World because it is fantastic... but anyway, this scene makes you consider how often trademarks and corporations are used as sponsors for movies and other media. It's interesting because it's obviously a fake advertisement randonly thrown into the movie, so I wonder if the companies still made a lot of money off it.

This clip is only a minute long and really funny! Garth even mentions the "lack of altruism" we discussed...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7thSdlRhuM

Jeopardy in a movie

I was flipping through channels and the movie White Men Can't Jump was on. There's a scene where the character is a contestant on Jeopardy. Alex Trebek is the host, like in the real show, and clearly there was permission granted to use the show in the movie, but I'm sure there were some kind of copyright issues to deal with because the set of the show was used, along with the show's logo and the host.

Interesting premise: commerce vs. culture

Cory Doctorow has published a new article arguing that we need to distinguish between commerce and culture in our application of copyright laws. Cory's really smart and knowledgeable on the subject of IP, but I'm not sure this is a workable dichotomy. What do you think?

Link

The Nanny Goes Abroad

My mother just got a new cable TV plan, Optimum International. Her new plan with IO en Espanol, includes 35 channels from Latin America. Well, I was watching one of the channels from Argentina, “Telefe”, and noticed that about 50% of their shows were remakes of old U.S. ones. They were the same exact shows, but just redone with Argentinean actors. For example, The Nanny (La Ninera) and Married with Children (Casado con Hijos). It tripped me out because as I’m watching “La Ninera”, I realize that they are even using the same scripts from U.S. version of an episode I remember from here. The Spanish translation was the only difference. I searched You tube for an example to show you guys… I couldn’t find the “Argentinean Nanny”, but came across a Mexican version. Okay, so I guess remakes of old U.S. shows are all over the world. I’m sure I haven’t discovered America here and some of you who’ve been able to travel or study abroad might have already seen this, but other than hearing about a British version of American Idol, this was new to me. Are U.S. studios selling these scripts overseas? If not, these guys are seriously infringing copyright laws… or are they? Is it illegal in another language?

Announcer voices

I've been listening to TV lately (white noise as I try to do homework) and throughout movie ads and car commercials I am noticing very few different sounding voices doing the ads. Is this because advertisers and marketing firms have determined a few palatable voices for us to hear? Can the actor copyright his intonation or voice so that it is not used for other projects in the same pitch? Can the company for whom the actor is working retain rights to that voice tone and inflection pattern and insist that the actor not use that exact pattern to sell other products?

My Best Friend's Wedding Part II?

I don't know how many of you remember the 1997 film My Best Friend's Wedding with Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney (sp?), and Cameron Diaz, but I recently saw a trailer for the upcoming film Made of Honor, which stars Patrick Dempsey from Grey's Anatomy, and wondered if there is a case of copyright infringement here. I will include a link to the trailer for Made here:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=REbmKBJVEeU

It looks very familiar to me.

Here is the link to one of the Wedding trailers, for those who haven't seen the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119738/trailers-screenplay-E11168-310

These films seem to have identical premises (even with the gender reversal) and I'm surprised there hasn't been some conflict as of yet.

Check this out...

Hey guys, I don't have the songs downloaded so here is the link if you wanna listen. You all probably all know these two songs, but listen to them and compare how similar they really are...

Why?

As we all know, the first week of classes includes lines at Starbucks, migrations of thousands of students down University and W. 4th, lines at the book store, and of course, new syllabi which dictate how we will spend hours upon hours reading, writing, and studying for the next few months. Glancing over my new syllabi, most of which seemed quite standard, I discovered that one of my professors opted to "copyright" his syllabus. Technically, the syllabus was copywritten once it was created and printed out; however, I found it interesting the the professor felt it necessary to include "© 2008 Professor's Name" on the bottom of each page of the syllabus. Is there a purpose for including this on something as banal as a college course syllabus? Is there some kind of "intellectual property" contained in the syllabus that requires a professor to include the copyright symbol? After looking it over, I couldn't find anything specific that I would consider "intellectual property" worthy of a copyright. The syllabus included a sentence long "course objective," a list of the books, readings, and assignments, and a grade breakdown. Nothing out of the blue, nothing creative or original, and nothing that anyone (in my opinion) would ever infringe upon. So the question is, why?

I have a slight obsession with pop and 80's music (a carry over from my elementary school days). So I was recently listening to the new Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana song "See You Again", and I couldn't help but hear the same chords and beat from the Corey Hart song "Sunglasses at Night". This was fueled not only by our last class where we did these kinds of musical connections but also from just a simple innocent comment from my friend Alejandra who picked up on the similarity just a moment after I did. Is it just me, or could this totally be a future lawsuit? =)
~ Vanessa

Cory Hart - Sunglasses at Night



Miley Cyrus - See You Again

Is it just me, or do you see it too?

Hey class!

I'm going to put it out there...I'm really into movies. I've seen all of the Oscar nominated films (except Atonement, which I keep putting off due to my disdain for Keira Knightly), and Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" definitely tops my list as one of my favorites. It's a tale of two brothers who need money, and rob their parent's jewelry store. The plan goes awry when the assassin that they hire to do the job accidentally kills their mother, and the brothers find themselves in a downward spiral of guilt and looming repentance. They have love interests on the side, which decorate the narrative as back stories. It's a great tale of betrayal that keeps you on the edge of your seat--I recommend that everyone see it!

A few weeks ago, preceding "Juno" (hilarious, heartwarming, smart) as the feature presentation, I saw a trailer for "Cassandra's Dream," directed by Woody Allen. I couldn't help but detect basic similarities between the narrative of "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and that of the film. Again, two brothers who need money essentially do something family related and immoral to get it--and they're taken over by guilt and the troubles that follow.

Is Woody Allen above the law? What's up with this? Check out the trailers and decide for yourself.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0795493/trailers-screenplay-E36088-314

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292963/trailers-screenplay-E35278-314

-Evan :-)

Welcome to the Applied IP Blog!

Hey guys,

NYU's blog system is too ridiculously cumbersome to use, so we're switching to Blogger. This is where, each week, I'd like you to post some kind of personal observation of IP in action -- preferably from your cameraphone or describing your personal experiences.