Tag Archive for: copyright validity

By Rachel Galloway

IMPORTANT NOTICE:  The views expressed in this article are solely those of Ms. Galloway and may not necessarily reflect the views of Law on the Row or Barry Neil Shrum, Esquire.

The last time I watched a Happy Tree Friends video was when I was around 13 years old in the company of my 10-year-old cousins. The videos typically consisted of the characters getting into situations where they lost limbs or impaled themselves with blood squirting everywhere. Needless to say, when I watched YouTube’s Copyright School, I was shocked to see those same characters teaching me about copyright infringement and piracy.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InzDjH1-9Ns?rel=0&hd=1]

YouTube’s Copyright School video has been on the site for roughly a month now with 248,734 views, 1,142 likes, and 5,914 dislikes (as of April 25, 2011 when I viewed it). I have heard and read many mixed feelings on this video and personally find it to be unsuccessful. Judging from the dislikes, I am not the only one.

I understand where YouTube is coming from in trying to educate children and teenagers on copyright issues using characters that they would normally watch such as Happy Tree Friends. However, I am not sure that they will get the effect they are hoping for. In my opinion (and experience with today’s generation), teenagers and children will continue to copy and use copyrighted work regardless of whether they understand that it is illegal.

In my two years at Belmont University as a Music Business major (where students are required to take a Copyright Law course), I have come to find out that teenagers do not care whether downloading music illegally is wrong or not. They simply do not care as long as they do not get caught. I find it ironic and hypocritical to go to a school where artists are encouraged to create original works and where copyrighted works are taught to be protected to find out that mosBioPic1t of the students (including the artists) still continue to download illegally. This infringement mainly takes the form of pirating music just like with the majority of American teenagers. In my opinion, if we can’t get college students who have a substantial knowledge on copyright infringement and it’s consequences to stop pirating music, then how can we get teenagers across America to do so with a 4 minute and 39 second YouTube video?

Pirating music is an issue that will always be a problem for the music industry. There have been many suggestions made that attempt to fix or at least ease this issue. Personally, I believe that the best way to go about this is to cut the cost of digital downloads (from $9.99 an album to around $1-$2 an album), so that consumers will not feel like they are forking out a ton of money towards entertainment that they believe should be free.  Personally, I would rather pay a low price for an album of superior quality than go through the trouble to find the pirated version for free that has a bad quality.

YouTube’s Copyright School had the right idea and motivation. Will it make a difference in the music industry? I personally doubt it. I applaud them for making an attempt to educate kids across America on the issue, but I believe that this is probably a losing battle.

Rachel Galloway is a Sophomore Marketing major with a minor in music business at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.  Born and raised in Atlanta, Rachel graduated from Providence Christian Academy in Lawrenceville, Georgia in May 2009.  She came to Belmont University the following year with an interest in marketing and event planning in the music world.  There, Ms. Galloway studied copyright under the tutelage of Professor Shrum.  Upon graduation, she hopes to open her own event planning company.

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators… and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.  –Bono (New York Times, January 2010)

The passage of the Digital Economy Act in England last year has resulted in a surge of articles that claim that the negative impact of illegal downloading of MP3’s on the record industry has been “debunked” and that, in fact, studies confirm the opposite, that there is no significant impact.  I recently addressed one such claim on my blog in the article entitled 90% of All Statistics are Made Up on the Spot:  Fact is, copyright infringement DOES kill jobs, which addressed an article by Rick Falkvinge.  Matther Lasar of Ars Technica recently posted another article essentially making the same claim, entitled Did file-sharing cause recording industry collapse? Economists say no.  Lasar’s article is based in large part on a research paper by Bart Cammaerts and Bingchun Meng of the London School of Economics and Political Science entitled Creative Destruction and Copyright Protection: Regulatory Responses to File-sharing..
In response to the DEA, one of the “key messages” of Cammaerts’ and Meng’s study is that common refrain that the decline in sales of CD’s cannot be attributed solely to illegal downloads of their digital equivalents.  To be precise, here is their key finding:
Decline in the sales of physical copies of recorded music cannot be attributed solely to file-sharing, but should be explained by a combination of factors such as changing patterns in music consumption, decreimageasing disposable household incomes for leisure products and increasing sales of digital content through online platforms.
Does this not seem like a circular argument to anyone else that the conclusion that a decline in sales cannot be attributed by file-sharing, a significant change in how music is consumed, is supported by the assertion that it is better explained by a “combination of factors such as changing patterns in music consumption”?   This conclusion by the “researchers” is based in significant measure, as are most of the conclusions in the report, on reports and studies done by others, including the long-since refuted study by Oberholzer-Gee and Stumpf conducted in 2004, entitled The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis.    Oberholzer-Gee and Stumpf erroneously concluded that the impact of illegal file-sharing on the music industry was, in their words, “null” but have since revised their conclusions and now argue that illegal file sharing is responsible for about 20% of the decline in the decline of revenue in the music industry.  See File Sharing & Copyright 2010. It seems on the surface that the study is nothing more than rehash of old information.  Based on review of these reports, Cammaerts and Meng concluded that “the claims by the music industry regarding the detrimental impact of infringing file-sharing on sales are flawed.”
The fact is all but a handful of the surveys related to the subject confirm illegal file-sharing reduces consumer spending on legitimate music, and confirm that the dramatic decrease in the sales of recorded music is caused by illegal file-sharing.  See, e.g., Norbert Michael (The Impact of Digital File-Sharing on the Music Industry: An Empirical Analysis, 2006), Rob & Waldfogel (Piracy on the High C’s, 2006) and Alejandro Zenter (Measuring the Effect of File Sharing on Music Purchases, 2003).  A 2006 study by Professor Stan Liebowitz, File-Sharing: Creative Destruction or Just Plain Destruction? concludes that all  “. . . papers that have examined the impact of file-sharing . . . find some degree of relationship between file-sharing and sales of sound recordings.”  Oddly, the only study that finds zero correlation is the Oberholzer and Strumpf study, which it has been frequently discredited.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (“IFPI”) recently released the IFPI Digital Music Report 2010:  Music how, when, where you want it reports what most economists and others who have studied the effect agree on:  “Overall music sales fell by around 30 per cent between 2004 and 2009.” p. 6.   The good news to be gained from the IFPI report is that overall sales of digital music increased to 27% of the industry’s revenue in 2010, a significant jump from almost zero in 2004.
All of this I say not really to fuel the flames of the the debate related to the cause of the decline in the music industry, but to point out that in the midst of all the studies, all the reports, and all of the conversation, there is one group of people whose voice is often not heard:  the songwriter.  I began this post with a quote from the incomparable singer-songwriter, Bono, who states flatly what is often overlooked:  the people it hurts are the creators.  If you read closely through the reports I have linked to in this article, you’ll find very little, if anything, about the impact of illegal file sharing on the songwriter.  Yes, there a some vague references to “authors” and sometimes “creators,” but for the most part the researchers focus their impact on the more broad category of impact on the overall sales of recorded music.  Very little attention is given to the trickle-down impact, i.e., how it affects the songwriter and the small music publishing companies that line the streets of Music Row here in Nashville.  The only report of which I am aware which includes a significant sampling of songwriters is the one conducted by Mary Madden for the PEW Internet & American Life Project in 2004 entitled Artist, Musicians & the Internet.  I won’t rehash all of the argument I made in 90% of All Statistics are Made Up on the Spot: Fact is, copyright infringement DOES kill jobs, except to say that most of these studies ignore the songwriter, on which the illegal downloading of songs has arguably made the greatest impact.  Even back in 2004, when the study was conducted, 75% of the respondents (which included a pool of artists and musicians in addition to solely songwriters) stated that they held down a second non-songwriting-related job which was their primary source of income.  I know for a fact that almost all of my songwriting clients hold second jobs, which prevents them from creating music.  The decline in these songwriter’s revenue is a direct result of the loss of mechanical royalties resulting from the massive decline in sales of physical product, not to mention a decline in performance royalties as a result of fewer artist being played on the radio, which is a result of fewer record labels investing in the career of new and developing artists.
This brings me to my last, and perhaps the most disturbing, observation raised by the new IFPI report.  The report states that
Illegal file-sharing has also had a very significant, and sometimes disastrous, impact on investment in artists and local repertoire. With their revenues eroded by piracy, music companies have far less to plough back into local artist development. . . .
The impact of declining revenues and illegal file-sharing on the availability of venture capital is another factor that is rarely if ever considered by many of the so-called reports on the decline in this “lost decade” of the music industry.  Why would any entity risk investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a new artist when there is no perceivable source of revenue from which to gain a return on investment?  The answer is that they do not.  The impact of the Internet on the creative industry does not stop at the music industry.  Other industries that are starting to feel the impact of lost revenues are the movie industry, the television industry, the print publishing industry and the fashion industry.  Anywhere that creative endeavors are conducted for profit, the profits are being diminished in one form or another by the impact of P2P file-sharing.  My wife has a saying about people who live together when they are not married:  “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”  This also applies in the creative industries:  people do not generally pay for that which they can get for free.
The chief executive of Kudos, Stephen Garrett, said it best perhaps:
We are in danger of creating a world where nothing appears to have any value at all, and the things that we make…will become scarce or disappearing commodities.
I hope that danger does not become a reality.  Being deprived of the talents of, say, a Don Henley or a Bono, simply because we are unwilling to shell out a buck for a mp3, would, in my humble opinion be a real shame.

By Barry Neil Shrum & Nathan Drake

In November 2010, the Federal Immigration and Counterfeit Enforcement agency (“ICE”) recently seized 82 websites and shut them down on the grounds that they were committing criminal copyright infringement. One of these websites has recently become the spotlight of attention:. Brain McCarthy, the owner and operator of channelsurfing.net, has been arrested by ICE and charged with providing free streaming content to NFL, NHL and NBA sporting events. According to the ICE, McCarthy accumulated approximately $90,000 from advertisers on his website, and has received over 1.3 million hits since being obtained last month, depicting the significance of the website.

IICECE acts as the principle investigative arm of the United States Department of Homeland Security and is currently the second largest investigative arm of the federal government. What makes ICE’s action unusual is that McCarthy is charged with criminal copyright infringement, since most other cases involving copyright infringements are brought against defendants in civil court in search of damages. If charged as a criminal, McCarthy could serve up to five years in prison and pay substantial monetary fines.

These actions by ICE create a certain level of perplexity in the eyes of the public. In the eyes of many, including the editors of TechDirt, ICE’s actions are not justificed since, at the time of the channelsurfing.net seizure, the website ostensibly did not “possess” any copyrighted material, but rather only provided links to other website/servers where the infringing material resides. Is the criminal charge levied against McCarthy warranted if he was merely acting as a conduit of infringing information?

Perhaps the answer lies in the criteria constituting criminal copyright infringement in United States Code Title 17 U.S.C. § 506(a) and 18 U.S.C. § 2319. The code states that the prosecutor must show the following elements to prove criminal infringement:

(1) that a valid copyright; (2) was infringed by the defendant; (3) willfully; and (4) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

To apply the analysis, it’s necessary to understand, on a technical level, what is happening on the McCarthy’s website. He is providing a “link,” i.e., a form of hypertext markup language, or HTML, that, when clicks, directly a stream of video to the user within the structure of McCarthy’s website. So the question become whether the criteria has been met. Let’s examine it:

Is there a valid copyright? Yes. This is easy. The NFL, NHL, NBA, etc. all possess valid copyrights in their broadcasts.

For purposes of financial gain. No doubt. Here, McCarthy obviously profits from the availability of the infringing material on his website, regardless of where the material is stored.

Wilfully infringed by the Defendant. Here is perhaps where some debate might occur as to McCarthy. Was his intention in placing the links on the site to infringe the copyright owner’s rights? If so, was it wilful?

One case that has examined the issue of whether embedded HTML code can serve as the basis for copyright infringement is Perfect 10 v. Google decided by the 9th Circuit. In that case,, Google was accused of civil copyright infringement for using a database of “borrowed” photographic images and making them available on their website when a user performs a search. The Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard University explained the ruling on this case as follows:

“The court went on to conclude that HTML instructions do not themselves cause infringing images to appear on a user’s computer screen because the HTML instructions merely convey an address to the user’s browser, which itself must then interact with the server that stores the infringing image. Accordingly, the mere provision of HTML instructions, in the view of the 9th Circuit, does not create a basis for direct copyright infringement liability.”

Several things should be noted about the 9th Circuit’s opinion. First, this case involved civil liability for copyright infringement, not criminal. The elements for civil copyright infringement are very different than those for criminal infringement. Secondly, the 9th circuit court is known as a radical circuit and many of its decisions are on the fringe. It’s rulings certainly do not hold the clout of the U.S. Supreme Court. Nonetheless, the decision, though it will likely be challenged, provides a new and thought provoking perspective.

So, bottom line, what do we think about McCarthy? In my opinion, the 9th Circuit is off base in regard to providing HTML code that “merely convey[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][s] an address to the user’s browser” which it must then “interact” with to obtain the infringing image, which is stored on a different story. What the court complete overlooks is that this is the very essence of vicarious joint & several liability! It’s a well-established principle of copyright law that everyone in the chain of distribution is jointly and severally liable for the actions of the primary infringer. Taking this theory out of the physical realm and putting it into the digital realm should not change its application. In my humble opinion, Mr. McCarthy likely knew what he was doing. He is providing users with access to multiple portals that provide them with streams of illegally obtained intellectual property, much as a vendor on the streets of New York city provides pedestrians access to counterfeited Rolexes! The fact that he does not “warehouse” the goods, in either case, does not change the fact that he is facilitating the infringement.

Arguably no other circumstances in the history of law has caused so many problems of application as the invention and development of the Internet. This virtual world as wonderful a resource as it is, allows for greater efficiency and anonymity for infringers than ever thought possible, serving as a double-edged sword for this generation. While some may view the efforts of those pursuing copyright infringement via the Internet futile – in fact many consider copyright itself unnecessary as a result of the Internet – these enforcement efforts are nonetheless important and essential in maintaining the rights set forth by our forefathers over a century ago: rights of monopoly balanced with limitations and public access. If we as a society do not honor these goals, it is probable that we will be faced with a less creative society.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110104/12324012513/did-homeland-security-make-up-non-existent-criminal-contributory-infringement-rule-seizing-domain-names.shtml

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-feds-campaign-against-pirate-websites-leads-to-an-arrest/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110303/16584013356/ice-arrests-operator-seized-domain-charges-him-with-criminal-copyright-infringement.shtml

http://www.ice.gov/about/overview/

http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm01847.htm[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Mark Twain had a lot to say about statistics, ranking them as the highest of all lies:  “There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics.  Twain is also attributed with the more insinuated saying that “statistics are like ladies of the evening, once you get them down, you do anything with them!”   It’s been quite awhile since I’ve seen a manipulation of statistics that illustrates Twain’s philosophy about them more than what is found in the article posted by self-styled “political evangelist” and anti-copyright activist, Rick Falkvinge, this week entitled Kill Copyright, Create Jobs. Absent three very slick and attractive graphics, the only “facts” that Falkvimark_twain_pic_440_1_nge offers in support of this conclusion is statistics which, as far as I can tell, are made up!
 

In an effort to defeat the claims of the United Kingdom’s “copyright industry” that 1.2 million jobs will be lost by 2015 if stricter enforcement of copyright laws is not enacted, Falkvinge begins with the exaggerated conclusion that “for every job lost (or killed) in the copyright industry due to nonenforcement of copyright, 11.8 jobs are created in electronics wholesale, electronics manufacturing, IT, or telecom industries — or even the copyright-inhibited part of the creative industries.”
Falkvinge reaches this absurd conclusion through a somersault of logic involving segregating the “creative industries” into various categories of groups subdivided into “copyright-dependent” and “copyright-inhibited” sectors.  Of course, these phrases are never precisely defined but, reading between the lines, the reader can gather that the latter sector includes industries “fueled by a lack of copyright monopoly enforcement,” while the former we must assume includes some form of enforcement.  Once he groups the various creative industries according to this loosely defined structure, he asserts that “the contribution of the copyright-inhibited industries outweigh the copyright-dependent industries by a factor of 11.8,” and then draws the leap of faith that when a copyright-dependent job is lost, a copyright-inhibited job is created.  He then forms this general conclusion: “Prevent copyright enforcement, or weaken or kill copyright, and create jobs. Lots more of them.”  Wow!  Please, Obama, take note of this staggering feat of intellectual prowess!
There are so many errors in this article, it’s hard to begin, and I don’t intend to address each one.  But as you start to examine the sectors of industry that Falkvinge places into these divisions, you can easily see where his analysis falls apart.  Seriously, I don’t think it’s intended so much as analysis as it is rhetoric.  Nonetheless, let’s look at some examples.
In the first instance, Falkvinge erroneously relies on the conclusions of Peter Higgs in Beyond the Creative Industries for his foundational argument that the “creative industries” of the U.K. only account for 7% of its GDP, which he divides into three categories:  copyright-dependent, copyright-inhibited and copyright-agnostic.  I say he relies on this statistic “erroneously” because the 7% figure contained in Higgs’ report is based on what Higgs calls the “creative core” of the industry, not the entire industry.  Higgs’ defines the creative core as the “pre-creative and creative stages of the value chain” (p. 27).   This approach, Higgs establishes, only focuses on those involved in the initial stages of creation, i.e., the musicians, the dancers, the producers, etc (p. 28).  Thus, by default, the analysis does not factor in the post-creation employment of the creative industry and, thus, cannot be used in support of Falkvinge’s overall asssertion that on 7% of the GDP of the United Kingdom is based on the creative industries.
Second, in one sweeping yet unexplained fell swoop, Falkvinge places the entire advertising and marketing industry in the “copyright-inhibited” category.  Last time I checked, the advertising and marketing industry relied in large part on the creation of intellectual property, much of which is copyrighted work which relies on enforcement.   In another breathe, again without laying any factual foundation, he states that only 25% of the software, electronic publishing, games, film, television, radio and photography industries are “copyright-dependent.”  Twenty five percent?  Seriously?  Then he “estimates” than only 50% of the music and performing arts sectors of the creative industry are dependent on copyright protection.  Again, really?
With regard to his category of “architecture, visual arts and design,” Falkvinge’s “analysis” is totally off the mark.  First, again, he simply asserts that 100% of the architecture industry is copyright-inhibited, meaning it does not rely on copyright protection for enforcement.  He doesn’t define whether he is referring to architecture as a visual art or whether he is referring to the more intellectual and abstract protection of the actual structure which the U.S. Congress protected in 1996 with the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act.   One can only assume that Falkvinge is unaware that the U.S. and most other Berne Convention signatory countries protect such works, since he groups architecture with the visual arts.
Secondly, Falkvinge lumps all of the “visual arts and design” industry into “fashion design” and then asserts that it is “copyright agnostic,” since fashion design is not entitled to copyright protection.  Ignoring the fact that there are many other arts to be considered in the visual arts and design sector of a country’s industries, let me just address the last assertion about fashion design.  There are several nations that actual do offer copyright protection for fashion design, namely the European Union, and France individually, and Japan, just to point out a few.  The U.S. currently has legislation pending that would follow in the footsteps of these country and protect U.S. fashion designers whose designs are pirated as soon as they are released.  (See this post on Law on the Row regarding the pending legislation).
As Falkvinge draws to a long and painful conclusion, he states that U.K’s “monopolized entertainment [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][industries’]” claim that they will lose 1.2 million in jobs by the year 2015 is “deceptive, dishonest and bordering on fraudulent,” which he uses to link to another self-aggrandizing article in which he claims that we as a culture are creating now more than ever, that copyright monopolies are an obstacle, and the copyright abolishment would only intensify this effect.  All I can say to Falkvinge’s claim is bull$^!+.  Isn’t that something akin to the pot calling the kettle black?  Is it really deceptive to say that most of my songwriting clients, the people who write the music, are struggling to feed themselves and have to take full time retail employment to make ends meet?  Is is dishonest to say that those same songwriters do not create as much music as they did before they were forced to work 10-12 hours a day to support their families?  And how can you deny the decline in sales of recorded music?  How can you deny the falling profits of the world’s entertainment conglomerates?  I certainly don’t pretend to know about the music industry of the U.K., but I do know that the local economy in Music City U.S.A., Nashville, Tennessee has suffered dramatically as a direct result of illegal downloading of copyrighted works.  I certainly know that this has a trickle down effect on all sectors of the music industry here, including my own practice!  If any of these claims are fradulent, then call me a fraud.
Long before Falkvinge began spinning his  illogical analyses, a company of men including Jefferson, Madison and Pinkney and other great thinkers of their day dealt with the issue we are dealing with – should creative ideas be entitled to protection as individual property?   These men debate natural law versus utilitarianism, and ultimately derived what is arguably a very workable system of protecting intellectual properties.  The U.S. system is based on theories like those of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, who believed that we should “give to every man his own,” and that man acquired the ownership of property by exerting labor and converting nature – in this case ideas – into something that benefits society.  In fact, Locke believed that because a work created by an individual enriched society in general, and would theoretically continue to do so in the future, the author should have the right to be compensated as long as that benefit to society continued.  But, our Forefathers also wisely saw that in order to create, it is helpful to have a thriving public domain, so they placed certain limitations on these rights, namely granting the monopoly for “limited time.”  The “monopoly” of copyright protection – Falkvinge derisively refers to it as the “copyright monopoly” as if it’s a bad thing – is merely a reflection of these ideas.  If we believe that one should benefit from his or her own creation, his or her own expression of an original idea, then laws and rules are the only way to enforce that in a developed society.  Because of the wisdom of our Forefathers, we have that in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution.  For my money, the logic of Locke, Hobbes, Jefferson and Madison surpasses the diatribe of Falkvinge at least by a factor of 11.8 to 1!
So, in summary, I am quite certain that Falkvinge, if he even takes note of my existence, would categorize me as just another one of the “lawyer who advocate maximization of the copyright monopoly.”  He would likely also allege that my claims are misleading if not bordering on fraudulent.  Regardless, I think that it is evident that Falkvinge’s assertion that for every 1 job lost to copyright infringement, 12 more will pop up to replace them is unfounded and, frankly, completely manufactured.

 


[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]