The never-ending session
08 MAY 2008 – Hot on the heels of the European Union pledge to increase the performance copyright protection period to 95 years, comes a new proposal from EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy to set up a special fund to pay royalties to session musicians. The fund would be paid for by the money raised from the copyright extension.

Session musicians are the ‘hired hands’ of the music industry. They are often highly respected within the industry but are seldom known or heard of outside of it. They turn up at the recording sessions of the music stars, play their instruments, charge their fee and go home again.

However, could that now change as a result of Mr. McCreevy’s proposals? It occurs to me that it could represent a very major change in the current business model of the recording industry.

For example, there may be some session musicians willing to forego their fee (or accept a lower fee) in return for a larger share of the royalties. This would result in lower production costs and make it easier for struggling or lesser-known artists to get their music made and distributed. But, in turn, that would mean that the session musicians would have to carefully judge which songs were likely to be hits in order to make their return. In effect, they become investors in the product. So, will working with royalties make session musicians more entrepreneurial?

Well, perhaps but I must admit that I am probably reaching a bit here. After all, the royalty proposal is, at this stage, just a proposal and I should think that quite a lot has to be done before it becomes a reality. Secondly, even if it does become a reality, session players may still elect to take both fees and royalty. I suppose I would.

But speculation over the future shape of business models is fun and I just could not resist the temptation to take a run at this one.
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Put that guillotine down, Monseiur
05 MAY 2008 – Regular readers of this blog may recall that, at the end of last year, I wrote an article about the French proposal to tackle illegal file-sharers by means of cutting off their internet access. I said then that, if the method appears to work, then it could catch on elsewhere. Certainly it is an idea which has been enthusiastically taken up (not surprisingly) by music industry organisations such as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

My tentative predictions were borne out rather more quickly than even I had anticipated with the UK government, among others, seemingly picking up the idea and seriously toying with it. However, plans for similar measures here were somewhat setback by resistance from the net industry which refused (rightly in my opinion) the policing role.

Now the ‘guillotine’ movement (for want of a better term) has been dealt another blow, this time by the European Parliament which has – only narrowly, mind you – voted against the proposal of a implementing this measure Europe-wide.

But this does not mean that the idea is dead in the water. Far from it. The European Parliament vote does not have force of law, which means that the various national governments now have it within their gift to legislate for it domestically. However, this ‘no’ vote does have the effect of knocking some of the moral impetus out of the idea. This is not to say that it won’t spread, but I do think it makes the spreading more of an uphill task.

I don’t think that the French government will be deterred and I also think that the music industry will lobby intensively to keep the idea afloat in the UK as well. Other countries may or may not follow suit. But, and overall, I think that the music industry will not get the kind of global, universal approach they want with this idea and, even in countries that do implement the ‘guillotine law’, it still remains to be seen as to whether or not it actually works.

The war drags on.
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Intelligent use of fair use?
28 APR 2008 – Imagine there was no such thing as intellectual property? Yes, I realise that there are a whole load of people who not only imagine such a thing but actively desire it too. However, until such time as they get their way, the rest of us can be entertained by this kind of thing.

Yoko Ono is suing a company called ’Premise Media’ who have made a documentary called ‘No intelligence allowed’ wherein they question Darwinian theories of evolution. The problem has been caused by the film-maker’s use of the famous John Lennon song ‘Imagine’ in the soundtrack of the film. Ms. Ono claims that this is copyright infringement and Premise Media, in turn, claim protection under the doctrine of ‘Fair Use’ (they having employed no more than an excerpt from the song, apparently).

Now the difficulty with the ‘Fair Use’ doctrine is that it is very difficult to define what actually constitutes ‘fair’. It all depends on circumstances and must, therefore, be judged on a case-by-case basis. So, who can say in advance how this one will turn out?

For my part, I am pleased to see that the ‘Fair Use’ doctrine is still alive and well in the USA. Contrast this with the UK where the principle has been circumscribed into near-extinction (insensibly in my view) by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and subsequent amendments.

Of course, I have no idea as to whether Ms. Ono’s claim will be vindicated by the courts. But I do suspect that there may be a political subtext here. After all, John Lennon implored his listeners to “imagine no religion” and, while the film-makers may not exactly be religious-types themselves, the whole idea of ‘intelligent design’ is much more borne of religious philosophy than scientific inquiry.

I am looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. But I am not expecting any divine interventions.
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Don't go to jail
23 APR 2008 – One could be forgiven for forming the impression that the European Parliament has set itself up as the champion of the file-sharer. Only last week, it rejected calls for a ‘guillotine’ law that would lead to persistent illegal file-sharers having their internet access cut off. Now they have come out against the idea of file-sharers facing criminal sanctions. Well, as long as they don’t do it for profit.

The move comes shortly after the ‘IP crime Directive’ which was enacted last year and seeks to impose criminal penalties on illegal file-sharers (to add to the civil penalties they may face).

Supporters of the IP crime Directive insist that criminal sanctions would only be employed against persistent, industrial offenders, i.e. criminal gangs looking to make profits from copyright theft, as opposed to the solitary, doing-it-for-fun consumers who just want to listen to music.

So how does the latest European Parliament announcement make any difference? It seems, on the face of things at least, that everyone is agreed that only the professional, organised copyright thieves should be punished. The various factions just appear to have come to this conclusion from different directions.

But, as is often the case, perceptions are more important that the actuality. By taking the stand they have, the European Parliament members have sent out a pretty clear message that they do want the net to flow in Europe. That is the real concern behind the criminalisation of file-sharing; not that some serious counterfeit gangs face justice (they should) but that, in the process of pursuing them and shutting them down, a whole lot of other people are simply intimidated off of the net.

This has been, and may still yet be, a long and winding road but I think I can see some signs that a broad consensus is emerging as to where the lines of legitimacy should be drawn.
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It's not whether it's David versus Goliath - it's whether David and Goliath had a deal
14 APR 2008 – "It's a David and Goliath battle", it says under the headline to this story, which is about how George Lucas (Goliath) is suing Andrew Ainsworth (David) for some gargantuan sum of money for making more Star Wars costumes that George Lucas originally had in mind to be getting from this guy.

I first encountered Ainsworth in the form of his display window in Twickenham, which I photographed last July, because it looked fun, and strange. Star Warriors in Twickenham? How odd. Well, not really, because Twickenham is one of the centres of the British film and TV industry. But it seemed to me odd at the time. The point is, these are no cheap knock-offs, these are the real things, made by the guy who made the original things themselves.

This "David and Goliath" vibe, which you constantly encounter in stories about IP quarrels, illustrates one problem with IP law, which is that a lot of people side with David against Goliath on principle, simply because David is David and Goliath is Goliath, and regardless of any other considerations of rightness or wrongness. That, I think, is the wrong way to think about such disputes.

But the right way, surely is to see this as a dispute about a contract. The problem in this dispute is that there was no original contract, of the sort anybody wrote out, haggled about, and then signed. Presumably neither party had any idea how big the spin-off merchandising aspect of the Star Wars franchise was eventually going to become. At first, all they thought was happening was a bit of costume design.

But now, George Lucas thinks he owns the designs he paid (very little) to have done, but the bloke who did them reckons he owns them. The Californian courts have already decided in George Lucas's favour, and my guess now is that, if I went into the details, I'd end up agreeing with them. The point being that although Lucas paid very little, he did pay. Insofar as considerations of contract do illuminate this matter, they suggest to me an original meeting of minds around the idea that Lucas owned these designs, and that Ainsworth later changed his mind when he realised how much money he could make. But,that's just as guess on my part. I don't know.

But two things I do know. First, as so often with IP disputes, this is indeed best thought of as a contract dispute. And second, it is worst thought of as a David and Goliath battle. Often Goliath is right and David is wrong. Ask any London West End store plagued by shoplifters. London stores are often very big. Shoplifting is done by tiny enterprises by comparison. Yet the London stores are completely right about shoplifters and the shoplifters are completely wrong to be shoplifters. Size has nothing to do with it.
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My own private Leicestershire
07 APR 2008 – What has champagne got in common with the humble British pork pie? Not a lot, you might think. I suppose one could dine on the latter while washing it down with the former but I am told that that is rather uncommon, not to mention unsophisticated.

The actual answer lies in the protected IP status of both. Yes, indeed, the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie has been granted Protected Geographical Status under European Union law. Henceforth, only pork pies produced in the Melton Mowbray region (in the English county of Leicestershire) can be branded as ‘Melton Mowbray Pork Pies’. Of course, sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region of France has enjoyed this status for many years.

So now that the Melton Mowbray pork pie (which is distinguished by its being made with uncured instead of cured pork) enjoys IP protection in Europe, it does remain to be seen what protection it enjoys outside of Europe. While I believe that US law does extend some recognition of the PGS status to products, I am still not sure whether the Melton Mowbray brand could be as easily enforced there. The same applies to, say, Australia or Japan or South Africa or anywhere else that is not subject to European law.

The thing about this PGS status (or the similar Protected Designation of Origin) is that it seems to be entirely a European creature, borne, I think, from the time-honoured Bonapartist tendency towards protectionism. I cannot imagine that such a concept would ever have emerged from the Anglo-Saxon world.

However, that has not stopped this particular group of British producers from taking advantage of it. Doubtless, one needs every advantage one can get in the cut-throat world of pork pie making (no Sweeney Todd jokes, please).
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Daniel_k takes the law into his own hands
04 APR 2008 – My favourite recent intellectual property story concerned Creative Labs:

Creative Labs has enraged customers by threatening a developer with legal action after he wrote drivers that allowed its products to run smoothly on Vista.

Soundcard maker Creative accused the developer, known only as Daniel_k, of theft and warned him not to infringe its intellectual property.

Daniel_k has created a number of drivers which make Creative's soundcards work smoothly on PCs running Windows Vista. He had posted a link to them on a forum on Creative's website and many users had downloaded them.

Without his drivers, users say, Creative's soundcards cause Vista machines to crash or features to fail.

This is despite the fact that Creative markets its sound cards as "Vista-compatible".

But Creative has not taken kindly to Daniel_k's efforts and has accused the developer with breaching its intellectual property.

As a general point, I am entirely in favour of people "taking the law into their own hands". If it's okay for a judge or a policeman to do something to correct an injustice, then it should be okay for a civilian to do it. If it is not okay for a civilian to do it, then neither should it be okay for a judge or a policeman. I am on the side of Daniel_k and all those whom he has helped, and not just from the commonsense point of view, and I don't just think that Creative Labs is making an ass of itself from the merely PR point of view. I think that Daniel_k either is either right in law, or should be. If the law says only that he was stealing intellectual property, then I say that the law is also an ass.

It reminds me of all those arguments that libertarians like me have about civilians defending themselves against criminals by shooting at them with guns, and thereby frightening them away, and perhaps in the process killing them. If the law forbids this, the law is likewise an ass. If you are a robber and somebody kills you, well, you shouldn't have been a robber.

If Creative Labs objects to its intellectual property being stolen, well, they should have made the thing work properly in the first place and not lied about it on the box. As many have already said, they should now be offering Daniel_k a job, not threatening him with lawyers. At the very least they should be thanking him, and publicising his solution to the problem they have created, until such time as they can come up with anything better.
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The rights to Armageddon
04 APR 2008 – Have you thought about building an atomic bomb? If you have, then you have probably got a checklist of things to do, such as obtain the raw materials, a very spacious industrial building space, the necessary engineering skills and a team of physicists. And when your prototype is ready you will need somewhere to test it and that can be a tad difficult to find, especially as you will need to keep the entire operation secret lest your government, or somebody else’s, seeks to put a stop to you.

As if all that wasn’t enough of a disincentive, you may well have to cope with the additional hurdle of patent protection.

No, I am not making this up. It seems that the atom bomb is subject to no less than 2000 patents. To make matters even more forbidding, they are all owned by the US government which (presumably) has no shortage of financial muscle to enforce them.

However, this does give rise to some other possibilities when it comes to dealing with the subject of nuclear non-proliferation, the process whereby big countries with nuclear weapons seek to prevent smaller countries from developing nuclear weapons. Instead of using the current combination of bribes and threats, the US government could just threaten to sue them for patent infringement. That would surely make them think twice.

On the other hand, there is the risk that the bluff will be called and then some sort of court case would have to ensue, during which the US government would have to disclose its patents, thereby leaking these highly sensitive details to the entire world. I suppose that would rather defeat the object.

It’s all a bit too much for me. I think I will ditch my plans to build an atom bomb (not that I ever had any to begin with). Better, I think, to stick to putting up shelves in my study.
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This show will self-destruct in seven days ...
17 MAR 2008 – The BBC dates from an era when broadcasting was easy, if you were as big as the BBC, but in which copying was nearly impossible. Then it became possible, but still very expensive. The BBC consequently has an ignoble history of wiping some of its past glories. What's this? An old episode of Doctor Who? Who's ever going to want to watch that again? We need the tapes to do new stuff. Wipe. Talk about self-destruction.

Now, broadcasting is as easy as ever, aside from the slight problem that so many other organisations are now also doing it, and that there are now so many other distractions to divert people's attention away from the BBC. So, although the BBC gets mass audiences still, they aren't quite as mass as they used to be. But copying stuff and storing it forever, well, that's now a doddle. Everyone can now do that. Which creates both a huge opportunity and a huge problem for the BBC.

The opportunity is that the BBC, as a "public service broadcaster", funded by the "license fee", i.e. a TV tax. This means that the BBC is able to just give its stuff away, and use its generosity as a political argument whenever it is suggested that taxing all of TV to pay for the BBC is wrong, what with it being a tax, and what with only the BBC getting the money. So, give its stuff away the BBC does, on a huge scale.

The problem is that if the BBC gives everything away, forever, to anyone who wants it, both it and the participating artists will be spurning the lucrative income that is to be had from selling stuff on DVD or as paid internet downloads, to people who want to own it. What happens to the "digital rights", not just of the BBC but of the performers in BBC shows? (The same argument is at the root of all the strike turmoil in Hollywood just now. First it was the writers. Now it's the actors.)

The BBC's answer, for now, is DRM, "digital rights management", in other words restricting the copiability of its programmes. If you go to the BBC iPlayer site, you find that you can watch some things (but not all things - not movies for instance) whenever you want, on your computer, but not for as long as you want. You have thirty days to start watching, and then seven more days to finish watching. After that, the file self-destructs. Self-destructing files offends many, including me. It's not in the nature of files to self-destruct. Files stick around forever, or they should. The music industry has simply been told by its customers to dump DRM. But the BBC doesn't have "customers", not exactly.

What the BBC has is voters, and most voters will be satisfied with this iPlayer arrangement, as a more than decent improvement on the BBC's regular service. We fanatics who want files that don't self-destruct are poltiically insignificant in number and we can just record stuff onto a TV hard disc. Or buy the DVD. Or try to hack iPlayer. That will keeps us busy and happy. As always with the BBC it's a canny compromise between economics and politics.
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Yes, I accept...what?
11 MAR 2008 – It is with some degree of confidence that I can wager that every single person reading this article has, at some point or other, downloaded a software programme onto their computer. Even if it was only the operating system.

Now, a question for you; how many of you know and understand the terms of your software licence? How many of you even bothered to read the terms of your licence? How many of you are even aware that such a licence exists?

I am going to hazard that the answer to the first two questions is "none" and that the answer to the third question is "very few". See, in most cases, when people purchase software programmes for their hardware, they just click through the necessary steps including the one that asks them to accept or reject the terms of the licence without bothering to take the time to read it or even glance at it. It's all just part of the process and what most people want from their computers is speed and efficiency not headache-inducing small print.

So, when the National Consumer Council complains that software licences are "obscure, unfair and unbalanced" who is in a position to argue with them? Certainly not the consumers, who seldom bother to read the wretched things.

The complaint, which has been filed with the Office of Fair Trading, calls for licences to be written in plain English and for consumers to be given proper notice of them.

I wholly sympathise with any lay person who is trying to pick some sense out of the gobbledegook that passes for most IP licences. That job is hard enough for seasoned lawyers. However, I am less inclined to blame the software vendors for the alleged 'lack of notice'. In most cases, the licences are available to peruse prior to completing purchase and the vendors are likely to act accordingly if their customers take the time and trouble to read them and, consequently, refuse to purchase the software.

It always takes two to make a bargain. But, for as long as consumers cherish speed and convenience over greater rights, I cannot see things changing.
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One word - many meanings
07 MAR 2008 – There are fakes, and there are fakes.

Some of the "fake" handbags you read about are fake only in the most arcane, almost metaphysical, sense. They are made in an identical manner to the "real" handbags supposedly being "copied", made with identical materials and adorned with identical labels, by the same people with the same machines. The are only fake in the sense of not actually having been ordered by the organisation referred to by the label. Otherwise they are genuine.

The organisation indicated by the label has been swindled. They did a deal with the maker of the handbags saying that only the handbags they ordered would be made, and saying that no further identical handbags would be sold through the back door, as the saying now goes. The handbag makers broke that deal. This is certainly breach of contract, but it hardly makes sense to call it faking.

Other fakes and bad copies of well made handbags, but again, to call these "fake" is rather odd. They are also real handbags, just not quite as nice. Often the labels are actually different. Has anyone been cheated here? It's hard to say for sure. It's a grey area.

Then there are fake photos. Here it is news readers who get swindled, but again, only a bit. So the train never actually drove past the endangered Tibetan wildlife? He photoshopped it. Naughty fellow. And there's fake electrical stuff which is sometimes better than the original.

And then there are fake medicines and fake baby milk, and suddenly we are in wholly new territory. The pills look like pills, indeed they are pills. But inside, where it matters, they are indeed fake. It looks like milk, or blood plasma, or a cancer pill, but it isn't. Not only are medicine makers being swindled. So are hospitals. So are their patients, some of whom are being swindled to death.

What's going on here is that the handbag people, whose mere designs have been "stolen" by dodgy manufacturers, can't or can't be bothered to explain exactly what is wrong with what they suffer, and exactly who should do what about it all. Instead, they point at the poisonous-by-omission medicines, say that "fakes" are evil (as fake medicines certainly are), and say that therefore the world's police forces should drop everything else and throw the kitchen sink at cheating manufacturers.

You think I'm kidding? There was a recent British TV show called The Fake Trade where the word "fake" meant about five entirely different things in the space of forty minutes. It culminated in a poison pill chasing policeman making a speech to a bunch of handbag sellers about the evils of fakery. Poison pills! Handbags! Same thing! That's what he said. Not true, but everyone clapped, including the TV presenter.

But breach of contract should not be talked about as if it was murder. You can't win a difficult argument by merely repeating what you said to win a different and far easier argument.
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Public domain or private space?
03 MAR 2008 – The news of an upcoming consultation by the UK Press Complaints Commission into the use by newspapers of personal information gathered from social networking sites is, I think, rather timely.

I say this because of the increasing awareness of the growing issue of who, precisely, owns private data that is available from the ostensible public domain.

For example, if I have a profile up at, say, MySpace or Facebook then surely the information it contains is in the public domain? If so, does that include information such as my e-mail address and telephone number?

The PCC consultation will actually focus on the very important question of privacy but, of course, the issue of copyright is intimately linked in with this.

Some help on this issue can be gleaned from the social networking sites themselves. Facebook’s terms of use have a section devoted to User Content which is licensed to Facebook for as long it is posted, although ownership is retained by the User in question. The licence terminates automatically and immediately when the User withdraws the content from the site.

So where does that leave a third party (say, a newspaper or a blogger) who wishes to copy some or all of that content. Can Facebook grant them a sub-licence? And, if so, on what terms? If the User subsequently withdraws the information from the site, then does the sub-licence expire? If a third party has copied the information without authorisation, then who has a right of action? The site? The User?

So many questions and so few answers. Or so few clear answers, at any rate. I suppose that, at some point, somebody take legal action against someone else based on exactly this issue and, assuming we get a decision, then we may get some clarification.

In the meantime, expect a lot of beard-stroking and uncertainty.
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The menace of the not-for-profit IP violators
28 FEB 2008 – I have written before on this blog from time to time about the amateurisation of culture, of how much easier it has now become to do amateur music making, amateur publishing, amateur dramatics, and so on, on the internet, in a way that may not in any particular instance be all that impressive, but which collectively adds up to a huge challenge to the cultural professionals.

But there is a more basic way in which people doing important things without being paid is challenging the kinds of economic activity that the twentieth century made us used to. I talking about ... talking. It hardly makes sense to call a lot of the comments on blogs and in internet chatrooms as publication. It's just chat. But all this chat is transforming the economy, by destroying the advertising industry as the twentieth century knew it. Suddenly, all those separate enclaves of chat about the products of the capitalist economy, hitherto of no great significance when contradicted by big advertising campaigns, have been joined together into a vast world-wide hubbub, against which or in addition to which traditional advertising is either powerless or superfluous. I recently bought an Eee PC, which is a very small and very cheap laptop computer. Before and since buying this I have been enthusing about it on the internet. I have seen no advertisements for this product, yet it is already a huge world-wide hit, basically because people like me have been enthusing about it.

Very well, but what does all that have to do with intellectual property? A lot. Here is one way in particular. If it is true that advertising is being replaced by a vast, dispersed, amateur conversation - if the enthusiasm for a product is now formed less and less by paid professionals and more and more by individuals who just say that they love it, then in some cases, when it is convenient, those individuals will go beyond being mere advertisers, and will become distributors, again, for the sheer love of it.

I'm never going to give you an Eee PC, until such time as others are also giving them away, but I can acquire intellectual property and give that to you. I can copy CDs and give or post them to you, or make CDs into computer files and email them to you. EU Parliament demands action on criminal IP penalties reads like a very fierce headline. But the action in question turns out to involve only the professional distributors of violated IP rights, the ones who are making a living from this. If I steal someone else's Eee PC, or if you steal mine having heard my high opinion of it, a defence saying "I stole it because I love it - I'm not making any money" would be no defence at all. Seriously defending IP rights will require similar ruthlessness towards the amateurs. As time goes by, that will become ever more true.

Whether you think that such ruthlessness is either desirable or possible is another argument.

Please feel free to chat about (i.e distribute for free) the ideas in this piece, many of which I myself obtained from others.
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Music industry with Chinese characteristics
27 FEB 2008 – The difficulties of enforcing IP rights in China are legendary. For a long time there were no IP laws at all but even now that IP laws do exist, the authorities appear to be unwilling or somehow unable to enforce them. It seems to be a cultural thing.

There has been a lot of press coverage about the effect of this on Western companies who, on the one hand, relish the opportunity to peddle their digital goodies in the world’s largest market but, on the hand, are reluctant to do so in case they find that their digital goodies are all being stolen out from under their noses.

But what is China's response to this? Rather sanguine, it seems. Chinese performers, unable to earn royalties because of extensive illegal file-sharing are, instead, making their money from performing at commercial gigs.

And rather than follow the course taken by their Western counterparts (i.e. hire an army of lawyers to sue the pants of illegal file-sharers), Chinese companies seem to have given up on what they regard as a lost cause. This is evidenced by the China’s largest independent music company ‘Modern Sky’ who have made their entire collection available for free on Baidu.com, the country’s largest search engine.

So it seems that the sheer inability to collect royalties has forced the Chinese record industry into adopting a different business model from that of their Western counterparts. Assuming it proves successful, will the Westerners follow suit? Not in the short-term at least. The Western companies are having some degree of success at shutting down the pirates and while that success continues, I think they will make the effort to trudge down it.

However, there are now at least two different music industry models strutting the world stage and that is quite interesting.
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A matter of time
21 FEB 2008 – It was only a matter of time before the European Commission would get around to the matter of time. Strange is it not, that an institution which almost defines itself by its alleged difference to the USA, falls so predictably into line with the USA when it comes to IP?

If you haven’t guessed already then we are talking about copyright term limits, specifically those for recorded music which currently stand at 50 years after first public broadcast. Following some intense lobbying by such pop luminaries as Sir Cliff Richard, the EU Commission has finally caved-in and proposed an extension of the copyright protection to 95 years. Assuming this makes its way into law (and there is no reason to believe that it won’t) then it will follow the standard set by the USA a few years ago, where a similar extension was enacted into law courtesy of Congressman Sonny Bono.

Of course, the American precedent was not mentioned as the reason for the Commission decision. Instead, the justification given is that artists who perform the song should be treated similarly to the artist who writes the song (and who currently enjoys copyright protection which extends to 70 years after death).

Personally, I am not sure about the IP regime being used to reflect these kinds of value judgements. But there we have it.

The Commission proposal will, I am sure, be music to the ears (pun intended) of ageing stars such as Sir Cliff and Roger Daltry who would otherwise be facing the prospect of their hit records from the late 1950’s and early 1960’s dropping off the end of the IP protection sphere. Still, it does bear out the time-honoured axiom that old rock stars never die, they just go on collecting royalties.
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Turning ISPs into IP policemen
20 FEB 2008 – The Times reports:

People who illegally download films and music will be cut off from the internet under new legislative proposals to be unveiled next week.

Internet service providers (ISPs) will be legally required to take action against users who access pirated material, The Times has learnt.

If the government introduces this new legislation, it will not be successful. Geeks will introduce encryption or other technologies that hide what is being transmitted. If the proposed law has any success at all, it will make the lives of ISPs absolute hell, massively raise the cost of broadband connections and create huge compliance departments to snoop on users' internet use. Maybe ISPs will just end up blocking all peer-to-peer traffic, killing off Skype in the UK and destroying the BBC's broadband TV service.

Large swathes of the supposedly private sector in Britain have had quasi-governmental duties imposed upon them in recent years. Much of the form filling that you now have to do in British banks, for instance, concerns laws which the banks must obey and must impose upon you but which they are forbidden to tell you about. This makes them disliked, and more inefficient, and that makes them want to put their prices up, which they do, sneakily. Which makes them disliked all the more.

Once ISPs become as unpopular as the banks are now, further demands will be made to regulate them even more. The British economy is already faltering. This could make things that much worse.
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Take me out to the ballpark
14 FEB 2008 – You learn something new every day, goes the old saying. It is certainly true for me today because I have just learned that American football teams claim IP rights over their own playing records.

The case in point is that of the New England Patriots who, having been on a straight winning run of 18 games, got to the Superbowl final confidently expecting it to be their 19th consecutive win.

In fact, so confident were they that the applied for Trade Mark protection for the term '19-0'. I cannot begin to tell you how far-fetched and exotic that sounds from the point of view of an English football (read soccer) fan like me. It conjures up visions of cheerleaders who claim copyright over their dance routines.

But, and joking aside, there is a serious point to their claim. It may be emotionally satisfying to wave the record triumphantly at the rivals but the real value to the team lies in the merchandising potential which can net them millions and for which Trade Mark protection is advisable.

However, there is a cruel sting in this tale; namely that the Patriots failed to win that 19th game. Consequently, they now have Trade Mark protection for a record score that they do not (and may never) possess.

I suppose they could hang on to their Trade Mark for long enough to build up a 19-game winning streak again. But, given that this appears unlikely, maybe they could sell the Trade Mark to one of their rival teams who do manage such a feat. I daresay, it would cause some rancour and no small degree of embarrassment, but at least the Patriots would make some of their money back.
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Why isn't the Butterfly Book just given away?
12 FEB 2008 – In my opinion, one of the greatest problems facing my country is the rather low quality of its primary education, but the good news is that this is a huge opportunity for national improvement.

Most schemes of national improvement seem to me exercises in taking refuge from difficulties in impossibilities. Politicians should be more honest and tell the truth! People should have better manners! People should stop expecting the government to do everything! Voters should vote more intelligently! Etc. But improving the British average national quality of the teaching of things like reading, writing and arithmetic is relatively easy, compared to most other schemes of British national salvation that I know of. The demand for such a thing is very strong. Most parents desperately want their children to do well at the educational basics. All that is necessary is to identify the teaching systems that work best, and publicise them in all directions.

About two years ago, I went on a course to learn how to teach reading, using "synthetic phonics". I paid about two hundred quid, but came away little the wiser. It was all so complicated, and in the end I just put it all to one side and forgot about it.

More recently, however, I have become acquainted with something called the Butterfly Book. Its author, Irina Tyk, is the designated literacy expert for the Supplementary Schools project which is run by the think tank Civitas. I help out at one of these schools for one evening a week, and I have been using the Butterfly Book. It works. Not long ago, I heard Irina Tyk talk about how to teach reading, at a Supplementary Schools training morning. That also made excellent sense, and made me a better teacher straight away.

But, the Butterfly Book is ... a book. If you want it you have to pay ten pounds or whatever it is, and then get it through the post. Could it not simply be distributed as a word processed file, on the internet? Irina Tyk does not believe in having lots of pictures to "help" children to read, because seeing an elaborately beautiful picture in full colour of a cat next to some squiggles and guessing that the squiggles probably say "cat" is not actually reading at all. So, the Butterfly Book is almost nothing but words, words, words, in plain black on plain white, and could be very quickly downloaded. I wish I'd thought to ask Irina Tyk about this, when I met her at that training morning. Perhaps she believes that parents won't value what they don't pay for. Perhaps she believes she has earned some money. (She certainly has.) Perhaps she thinks it is her Intellectual Property, and anybody getting it for free would just be wrong. Whatever, I would like to know.

Someone will do something like this very soon, if they've not done it already, for the glory and for the warm feeling that you get when you do the world a huge favour. (Oh, and for the greatly increased books sales.)
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Here be treasure, me hearties
05 FEB 2008 – I don't know about you, but if I was running a website that pointed its customers towards illegal movie downloads, I wouldn't call myself 'The Pirate Bay'. It strikes me as blindingly obvious that waving the word 'pirate' around one's URL is a rather flagrant way of drawing attention to yourself, particularly if your chief activity is what many people consider to be piracy.

But, such is the case with the guys who run The Pirate Bay, based in normally conscientious, law-abiding Sweden of all places. For some time now, they have been providing their customers with links to places where they can download illegal copies of movies while providing them all the necessary BitTorrent software tools to enable them to download away with abandon.

However, their swashbuckling days may soon be drawing to a close. The guys who run the operation have now been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law; a criminal charge which, upon conviction, could see the gang face jail terms of up to two years.

I suspect that they will attempt to defend themselves by pointing out that they do not actually store any illegal files on their servers. They merely link to places where the illegal files can be found. Just pointing to something does not constitute doing that something. However, it may not work for them. It is obvious from the whole nature of their operation that they do a lot more than merely link. They encourage, abet and facilitate in full knowledge that their customers are helping themselves to illegal copies.

I would be a little surprised if the owners do end up doing prison time but I would be equally surprised if they remain unmolested to carry on business as usual. These pirates may just be forced to hang up their cutlasses.
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