Sony's Chutzpah

Since Sony contends that it's "stealing" to copy music from your own CD to your own computer, let's see how they instruct buyers of their MP3 player's to acquire music - Walkman instructional video: How to acquire music.

So you have your brand new Walkman video MP3 player from Sony. Now let's get some music on it. There are two main ways to get new music for your Walkman video player. You can rip CD's that you already own, and you can get music from multiple online stores. So let's rip some CD's.

I just went out and bought a new album. With the CD in the drive, I can navigate Windows Media player to the "rip" tab....

(They next demonstrate how to rip this Sony CD.)

They strangely forgot to mention that their customers who follow their instructions are thieves.

The RIAA Does It Again....

Why are major media companies so eager to brand their customers as thieves?

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

Sure, the music industry knows that very few people are listening to CD's in their portable players - almost everybody now uses an MP3 player - and they have to know that if they could find a way to effectively enforce their notion that every one of these customers is a "thief", CD sales would drop to almost nothing. But away they go....

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

Nice.

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

And that makes sense... except, of course, that Congress in its infinite wisdom has criminalized doing so with most DVD's, as most are recorded in an encrypted format.

It's Public Domain -But He Had Better Be Dressed In Green

With Peter Pan about to (once again) fall into the public domain, Great Ormond Street children's hospital is preparing for the loss of revenue from licensing the story:

A vital source of funding for the hospital will come under threat from January 1 when Peter and his Neverland companions are thrust into the public domain. Author JM Barrie bequeathed all the rights to Peter Pan to the hospital in 1929 and they have provided badly needed funds ever since.

In many senses, Great Ormond Street has been a good steward for the Peter Pan legacy. Unlike companies which directly produce entertainment works, and which may guard their intellectual property at the expense of creativity and innovation, Great Ormond Street has licensed the story for adaptations and sequels which depart markedly from the Barrie original, and from what a media company might deem an appropriate depiction of the story's characters. That said, in my opinion, copyright protections are already too long.

When some order was first brought to global copyright under the Berne Convention of 1886, the intention was to reward authors and the first two generations of their descendants, explains Mark Owen, head of intellectual property at law firm Harbottle & Lewis. Copyright now expires 70 years after an author's death.

But in an age where characters and works survive for longer and in more media than ever before, copyright cut-off points are increasingly coming into question, he adds.

Let's be honest - a miniscule amount of the vast body of copyrighted material is of much interest even five years after publication, and virtually none is of interest seventy years after the author's death. The people who are interested in again extending the protection are companies like Disney, which do not wish to see their earliest works fall into the public domain. Nobody needs to be reminded of the irony in Disney's building its fortunes on public domain works, only to repeatedly and successfully lobby Congress to keep anybody else from doing the same with its own creations.

Meanwhile, Great Ormond Street is trying to prepare for a post-Peter Pan future:

Much of the hospital's hopes are down to Peter Pan in Scarlet, the winner of a competition to become the classic's official sequel. Commissioned in 2004, well in advance of the original's copyright expiry, the new tale by Geraldine McCaughrean has already been translated into 37 lanaguages and printed in 40 editions.

I can't help but wonder if the change of costume figured in to why this particular book was the winner. Depict Peter Pan in green, and you're in the public domain, but if you put so much as a hint of red on his costume.... (Here's a review of the sequel.)