Thursday, March 19, 2009

March (Trademark) Madness!

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is taking a cue from the International Olympic Committee and is aggressively defending its trademark rights to the name of its yearly basketball tournament.

The NCAA is going after businesses who use "March Madness" or "Final Four" without permission. The tournament is one of the most viewed sporting events of the year, and some businesses try to capitalize off of that popularity by using the marks without permission. Read all about it in the LA Times here.

I'm curious about the adult website that used "explicit puns on the trademarked basketball terms," but it's probably not something that I'll investigate any further.

In other government-meets-basketball-tournament news, President Barack Obama has made his picks for the championship. I'm glad to see that he's got my alma mater making it to the Final Four.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

New film -- copyright and mashups

The concept behind "Mashups," creating new compositions using bits and pieces of other compositions, is certainly not new. With the rapid growth of digital information, however, the mashup as an art form seems to be coming into its own. The collision of this art form, that unapologetically borrows without asking permission, and the various media industries who claim ownership of the borrowed material, is the subject of a new film called RiP: A Remix Manifesto by Canadian filmmaker Brett Gaylor.

Mashup artists such as Danger Mouse and Girl Talk, the main subject of Gaylor's film, have produced popular music by mixing together various artists' output -- most notably the Beatles and Jay Z in the case of Danger Mouse, with Girl Talk often sampling 20-plus songs to create one new song. Their argument, echoed by other copyright-reform advocates, is that their use is transformative and thus meets the requirements of fair use. Media companies tend to disagree.
Here's a description of the movie from its website:

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride.

A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

Which side of the ideas war are you on?

The "ideas war?!" Sounds exciting!

The movie is making the festival rounds and screening in a couple of Canadian cities, but don't fear if you can't make it -- Gaylor walks the walk and has made the film available on the website for his other project, opensourcecinema.org.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Avast! The Pirate Bay awaits a verdict

The Pirate Bay, a popular Swedish file-sharing site, is awaiting the verdict in a lawsuit contending that they are responsible for promoting copyright infringement by enabling users to download free (unlicensed) copies of music, movies, and software.

The Pirate Bay acts as an intermediary between users, enabling people to find and connect to other computers to download files. Though the company does not store any unlicensed materials on its own servers, several big media corporations (Fox, Warner Bros., etc.) filed suit alleging that the company is guilty of conspiracy to break Swedish copyright law.

So...an online community that connects individuals who wish to illegally share files is accused by industry giants of copyright crimes. Sound familiar?

The problem (or perceived problem, depending on your perspective) of sites that enable anonymous trading of copyright-protected materials is an interesting legal and cultural question. Under the notoriously industry-friendly Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Internet Service Providers are somewhat protected from prosecution if people use their networks to break copyright laws. Still, sites similar to Pirate Bay have been shut down, so we'll have to see what happens.