Scrivener's Error

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Scrivener's Error	Law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing) from the author's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.

26 July 2010

link to: 11:59 [GMT-6]

Link Sausages Slouch Toward Bethlehem (PA)

Just slouching out of the weekend, here...

Given that ComiCon was this past weekend, one might think that there would be jokey magazine covers with pictures of supervillains on them, and that superheroes would be ready to respond. Unfortunately, the cover to the right is no joke; and those aren't fictional or comic supervillains... they're all too real. And Foreign Policy doesn't have a sense of humor to start with.

Conversely, ComiCon didn't cover Darth Vader's second career, probably because it was on the opposite coast.
At the Sun-Times, a rather shortsighted piece by Andy Ihnatko extols a forthcoming effort to impose "reasonable" digital rights management. Even if it works, it will be a bad thing... because it will establish a hackable/crackable/subpoeanable/purposefully accessible central registry of what content one owns. I shudder to think about what that means in terms of "targeted advertising opportunities," even if it doesn't contain printed matter (and, eventually, it will — the economics of the situation basically demands it). The less thought about being labelled a subversive due to the contents of one's library, the better; do you really believe that registering a copy of the (hypothetical) Anarchist's Cookbook Video Companion won't result in a van parked up the street filled with surveillance gear (and that's just the semilegitimate version... in East Central Redneckistan, The Last Temptation of Christ might trigger scrutiny from some of the nutcases we've got)?

Then, too, it will positively kill the used-media/books marketplace — a "benefit" that I'm sure the proprietors have thought about, but that completely escaped Mr Ihnatko. Unless, of course, the DRM itself is so pathetically easy to crack that a teenager can do it in 48 hours, including creating the stripping code... just like DeCSS, or for that matter the Kindle "encryption" system. This is a consequence of the availability of the known-plaintext attack on multiple versions of the coded message; today's laptops have more computing power in their operating systems than it required to break Enigma, and if they can play that media, they've also got enough power to attack it.

The real problem, as usual with counterfeiting and piracy, is an economic one, not a technological one. If you make it unprofitable to engage in piracy by keeping quality of products/services high, useability unrestricted, and prices low, piracy/counterfeiting becomes an occasional nuisance. Only when your ego — and the purported value of your brand, whether it be Members Only or Viagra — gets out of control does DRM (etc.) begin to look attractive. It's an offshoot of the mercantilism versus comparative advantage problem, but that's too theoretical for even this blawg.

Mr Ihnatko's headline indirectly assumes that "reasonable DRM management" exists. It doesn't (and Members Only's experience in the 1980s is more than adequate proof). Get over it.
Extending from the preceding sausage, the Copyright Office insulted Hollywood today. Schade. Chapter 12 of the Copyright Act prohibits circumventing anticopying technology; that's why it's unlawful, for example, to circumvent the anticopying code on DVDs, even for legitimate academic and fair-use purposes. The Copyright Office, however, may exempt some categories of content from the anticircumvention provisions, and has done so this morning, ruling that the following uses do not violate Chapter 12:
- making small extracts from DVDs for educational purposes, documentaries, comment and criticism, or noncommercial use
- hacking phones and phone applications so they'll work on other phones and networks
- reverse-engineering video games for security and testing
- computer programs with dongle-based security when the dongle is damaged
- eBook editions that block read-aloud functions
I expect to hear the screams from Hollywood in about 45 seconds, and for a lawsuit to be filed by Friday.
Just when you thought it was safe to improperly classify documents because they would cause political embarassment, not serious or grave and forseeable damage to national security: Ellsberg II. And further than that, my excessively harsh and inclusive NDA will not allow me to say what I want to about this (arguably, I've already violated it once on this platter)... except that I would remind everyone that the oath of office is to protect the Constitution (not the presidency, not any political grouping, not any ideology, not any specific cause) against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Paul Krugman tastefully understates the reason that there hasn't been, and probably won't be, effective action on climate change: greed and cowardice. Not to mention ignorance, but since the ignorant won't even read his column...

Labels: copyright, culture, intellectual property, internet, miscellany, politics

Ritual disclaimer: This blog contains legal commentary, but it is only general commentary. It does not constitute legal advice for your situation. It does not create an attorney-client relationship or any other expectation of confidentiality, nor is it an offer of representation.

All material © 2003–12 except where otherwise indicated. All rights reserved. This blawg does not use the Creative Commons License, although I'm usually pretty good-natured about permissions for attributed reuse.

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Sausages?

Internet link sausages, as frequently appear here, are gathered from uninspected meaty internet products and byproducts via processes you really, really don't want to observe; spiced with my own secret, snarky, sarcastic blend; quite possibly extended with sawdust or other indigestibles; and stuffed into your monitor (instead of either real or artificial casings). They're sort of like "link salad" or "pot pourri" or "miscellaneous musings" (or, for that matter, "making law"), but far more disturbing.

I am not responsible for any changes to your lipid counts or blood pressure from consuming these sausages... nor for your monitor if you insist on covering them with mash or sauce.

Archives

Warped Weft

Now live at the new site. I have arranged some of the more infamous threads that have appeared here by unravelling them from the blawg tapestry (and hopefully eliminating some of the sillier typos). Sometimes, the threads have been slightly reordered for clarity.

Links of Interest

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Writer Beware and the Writer Beware Blog provide essential knowledge for writers who don't want to be ripped off
Writing-World.com published by the former managing editor of the now-defunct Inklings
Agent Research & Evaluation provides both free and paid analyses of literary agents
US Copyright Office, including both registration forms and records and quite a bit of other helpful information
Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searches of granted, pending, and some rejected trademark registrations
US Supreme Court Opinions from the current and past couple of terms
Law Library of Congress includes statutes for free
The Public Library of Law can help you find the law... but not use it in court, as many of its resources are not in proper form and do not provide all of the citation information needed in court papers
Legal, free e-books are available through Online Books (University of Pennsylvania) and Shakespeare (MIT)
Legal, free music is available through
- ClassicCat.net (what kind of music do you think you'll find here?)
- Music.Download.com (long-awaited successor to MP3.com)
- Janis Ian (artist)
- John McCutcheon (artist)

Other Blawgs, Blogs, and Journals

These may be of interest; I do not necessarily agree with opinions expressed in them, although the reasoning and writing are almost always first-rate (and represent a standard seldom, if ever, achieved in "mainstream" journalism). I'm picky, and have eclectic tastes, so don't expect a comprehensive listing.

A blawg is sort of like a blog on legal issues, but usually has a lot more links to outside resources (other than other blogs) than does a typical blog. Scrivener's Error is a blawg, not just a blog. You can find other blawgs at < ? law blogs # >.

How Appealing is aimed at appellate lawyers and legal news in general. If you care about the state of the law, start here — Howard's commentary is far better balanced, better informed, and better considered than any of the media outlets. To concentrate on the Supreme Court, don't forget SCOTUSBlog.
Some academics' blawgs with a variety of political (and doctrinal) viewpoints:
- Professor Anthony Arend (Georgetown Law)
- Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA Law) (aka "The Perfesser")
- Professor Jack Balkin (Yale Law)
- Professor Dennis Crouch (Missouri Law) (better known as Patently-O)
- Professor Michael Froomkin (University of Miami Law)
- Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University Law)
- Professor Rick Hasen (Loyola-LA Law)
- Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
- Professor Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law)
- Professor Michael Madison (Pitt Law)
- Professor Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown Law)
BoingBoing, by speculative fiction writer (and 'net activist) Cory Doctorow, is quite hostile to copyright enforcement efforts, particularly regarding file-sharing
The main European IP blawg of interest remains the UK-based IPKat, on a variety of intellectual property issues, with some overlap (with a less Eurocentric view) at IPFinance
Cyberlaw (Stanford) has its agenda grounded firmly in the so-called "digital commons," which might make a bit more sense if any of the advocates of that viewpoint understood diddly-squat about population ecology
The American Constitution Society blawg is a purportedly "liberal" counterweight to the so-called "Federalist Society" (which, despite its claims, should be called "Tory Society") that has yet to establish much coherence... but maybe that's all to the good.

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