Municipal Wi-Fi Actually (still) Exists?

I was under the impression that municipal Wi-Fi was a dead idea that municipalities had abandoned a couple of years ago.  Apparently, Coshocton, Ohio didn’t get the memo, because it’s municipal Wi-Fi network has been shut down by the MPAA.

Well, that’s what Gizmodo’s saying, based on a BoingBoing report.  Apparently, the town’s entire network was shut down due to a single user downloading something that was copyrighted.

But really?  How did this happen?  The way things are written, it sounds like the MPAA discovered the illegality and pulled the plug on the network.  Can things actually go that way?  Hmmm… even as powerful as private entities are, surely they don’t have the power to summarily wipe out a public service.  Right?  More digging is necessary!

No Suit for You!

I mentioned a while ago that ASCAP was suing AT&T over ringtones, saying that royalties were owed every time someone’s phone rang.  Public performance and all that.  Well, in addition to suing AT&T, ASCAP sued Verizon for the same thing, and PC World (via Yahoo!) is reporting that District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York has tossed the suit against Verizon.

Judge Cote’s reasoning is refreshing:

“Despite the accusation that Verizon enjoys revenue from publicly played ringtones, Verizon makes no revenue from the playing of ringtones, in public or elsewhere,” Cote wrote. “It makes revenue from selling ringtones, and it already pays a mechanical licensing fee in connection with those sales.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology, which is hosting a copy of the Order, also notes that the Court relied partly on common sense in making its ruling.  It always seemed somewhat strained to argue that Verizon should be liable for a public performance (even to the extent that a ringtone could constitute a public performance) when it had no control over when or how that public performance would occur.

France’s Copyright Legislation

France can be a strange country.  (And in other news, cats can be aloof.)  Well, perhaps it isn’t so fair to single France out; all countries have their peculiarities.  But France occupies a special place in the imagination, a land where the country is brought to a halt at the drop of the hat, where work-shortened weeks lead to hours lazing at cafes discussing politics and eating brioche, and where everyone is–generally speaking–trop <<cool>> pour l’école.

But then the country proposes what some are calling some of the most Draconian copyright laws in the world, and that leads to a bit of headscratching.  For the uninitiated, France passed a law in April that threatened to ban an individual from the internet if that person is thrice detected of downloading infringing material.  (The Register has the details.)

The law, however, was declared to violate the 1789 Human Rights Declaration on the freedom of expression.  (Bloomberg.)  Donc, the French tried again, and the lower chamber will be voting today on a revised bill.  The largest change is that some form of due process has found its way into the legislation, with the “Surveillance Authority” losing the ability to summarily disconnect the user (the case must first be submitted to a judge) and with authorities having to prove the unlawfulness of the behavior.

Even More on the Google Books Settlement

Settlement agreements rarely get the amount of scrutiny as the proposed agreement in the Google Books controversy, and now the Register of Copyrights, Marybeth Peters, has testified to Congress about the settlement.

While there are parts of the settlement that meet Ms. Peters approval (“some of the settlement terms have merit and should be encouraged under separate circumstances” such as the potential for the registry to “offer the copyright community, the technology sector and the public a framework for licensing works in digital form and collecting micro-payments in an efficient and cost-effective manner”), by and large her remarks were critical, noting that “none” of the potential positive “possibilities should require Google to have immediate, unfettered, and risk-free access to the copyrighted works of other people. They are not a reason to throw out fundamental copyright principles; they are a pretext to do so.”

Google Books Settlement and Privacy Concerns

Google has always been a problematic company for me.  On one hand, its search engine has become the de facto starting point for the vast majority of internet users, so much so that when Google goes down (as it will from time to time), people say that the internet is broken.  (See this Ars Technica article.)  Its clean, uncluttered search interface revolutionized searching, and its results were usually spot-on, with its “I’m Feeling Lucky” feature almost always taking you where you wanted to go.  In recent years, however, my experience with Google’s ability to find what I’m looking for has dwindled as SEO services have cluttered up search results, which is why I often use Bing or Yahoo! in addition to or instead of Google.

I’ve complained before of Google’s data-mining and -tracking, as well as its emphasis on “Cloud” computing. And now, there’s a new bug in my craw: Google Books.

Fun with the AP

Following up on yesterday’s post about the AP and its “mad as hell” posturing, we are beginning to see some of the lunacy involved with its new approach.  TechCrunch, which I reached by going through Gizmodo, has a story about how an AP affiliate got a C&D letter for posting an AP video, which was hosted on the AP’s YouTube page.  Go figger.

No surprises here…. Studios Don’t Like RealDVD

My last post (three weeks ago, natch) suggested that the studios would find some way to sue RealNetworks for its software, RealDVD, even if Real wasn’t hacking the encryption.  Looks like I was right, and for the same reason:

Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle-based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs.

…

For their part, the studios argued in legal filings that the software violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it bypasses the anticopying mechanism built into DVDs.

(From the NY Times, emphasis added.)

RealDVD

According to a blog on Fortune’s site, Real Networks (buffering…………..) has unveiled a new DVD ripping technology that doesn’t hack the encryption on DVDs.  This, so it seems, makes copying DVDs “legal.”  It must work somewhat similarly to VHS dubbing, but I don’t know.  I’ll look into it.

I hesitate to say that all of a sudden, everything’s “legal.”  Indeed, I’m not even sure that it doesn’t run afoul of 17 U.S.C. § 1201.  Section 1201(a)(1)(A) states: “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.”  In turn, under section 1201(a)(3)(A) “circumvent a technological measure” means “to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner.”  (Emphasis added.)  I can certainly see the MPAA deciding that Real’s technology somehow avoids or bypasses the encryption process.  And this doesn’t even begin to get into fair use or the whole time- or space-shifting argument.

Anyway, these thoughts are just based on a quick, cursory glance at a blog.  I’m going to follow up on this story and see what else I find.