davidNeedham

Article 1

Net giants, ISPs fear Canadian DMCA, seek copyright balance

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080213-google-yahoo-rogers-wants-balanced-copyright-in-canada.html

Within the past year or more, Canada has been working long and hard to reform their DMCA and copyright laws. They were supposed to be done late last year (Winter 2007), but they are being met with some resistance. Some include a new group of companies that include Google, Yahoo, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, and many others. They argue that stricter copyright law hurt both business and consumers and referred to it as "draconian". Despite what they said, the reforms seem to be making things better - in some cases relaxing the current rules. Some of the changes include expanding fair use policies, allowing citizens to circumvent DRM for legal purposes, kill a levy that the Canadian government has on blank media, take away liability for content passing through ISPs, and more.

Overall, this reform sounds like it's for the best. Relaxing copyright laws should help to grow media on the whole. This reminded me of what we talked about in class and in the readings about ISPs going to court over the content of their client's websites. This reform would better protect Canadian ISPs from their equivalent of the RIAA and make cases like Perfect10 v. CCBill defunct.

Article 2

Do Search Engines Promote Piracy

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2253654,00.asp

A few weeks ago, Warner Music sued a search engine company because they were believed to be purposely listing search results to illegal copyrighted material. The search engine in question was Seeqpod, and they believed their business was legitimate. In their eyes, they are exempt from prosecution under the DMCA as all search engines are. Accordin to Section 512 of the DMCA, the provider cannot know their search results are copyrighted, must take down links they know are illegal, and they cannot make any money from the illegal material. Warner Music claims that Seeqpod is well aware of the fact that their search engine returns illegal results, and that they directly benefit from it. Apparently this case is currently in trial, so there has not been a final ruling at this time.

The article stated that this case could further determine how search engines are handled in similar cases in the future, but I thought this had already been decided. This case closely resembles the case of Kelly v. Arriba Soft like we talked about in class. The biggest differences are that Arriba Soft displayed photos in the search engine (like Google images), and Seeqpod searched for music. It could be a valid claim to say that music searching is more likely to be used for illegal activity than image searching, but I suppose that is for the court to decide.

Article 3

With a death in congress, an IP shakeup looks likely

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080212-with-a-death-in-congress-an-ip-shakeup-looks-likely.html

Howard Berman (current chair of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property (SCIIP)) is soon expected to be promoted and assigned to take over the head seat at the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This is great news, because Rick Boucher (longtime supporter of expanded fair use and DMCA reform) is expected to take over Berman's old role. This is looking like it may be a sure thing, as Rep. Berman is likely to get reelected, and Rep. Boucher is next in line for the chair of the SCIP. Rep. Boucher is known in congress as "Congressman Hollywood" because of his backing of the entertainment industry. He has also supported many other bills the further make me think that he'd be a great guy for the job.

Maybe if "Congressman Hollywood" gets into this position as he is expected to, he can fix some of the problems addressed in the "Good Copy Bad Copy" documentary. He's been using his current power to push for more open and longer term fair use laws for people using copyrighted material. Both as a college student and multimedia author, I think he could really do some great things if allowed to reform the DMCA. If allowed to, he could start tackling some of the problems with the DMCA mentioned by Prof. Baron.