Category Archives: free culture

The Supreme Court has unanimously decided the Dastar case — and correctly. The issue was whether a film producer could be held $1.5m liable for using a public domain film without giving credit to the former copyright owner. The decision is being described as a loss for 20th Century Fox. It is more accurately a gain for the public domain. Continue reading →

Tomorrow’s vote at the FCC is discussed in Dan Gillmor’s column. The FCC will liberate the networks to consolidate because the FCC feels pressured by the courts. (“Courts” means the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sees a pressing First Amendment claim favoring network owners, but no First Amendment claim defending the public domain (“copyrights are categorically immune” from First Amendment scrutiny)). Read Dan’s column and wonder: here in this democracy, this universal opposition to the actions of a bureaucracy does what exactly? Continue reading →

This is an important week. Monday, the FCC rules on its mediacon rules. Monday could also be the day the Supreme Court decides the Dastar case. But most important of all: Wednesday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals hears the Aimster case.

EFF has written an amicus in the case (have you contributed yet?). EFF’s core argument is that it is time that a Court of Appeals properly interpret the Sony Betamax case. Of all the Courts of Appeals in the US, this is the best one to hear this issue. (Bias-meter reading: high. I clerked at that court). Let’s hope it hears it well.

This has been an issue close to my own heart. The best thing about Sony is that it recognized the harm that legal uncertainty can impose upon innovation. If innovators have to guess how a federal court will balance the effects of its technology upon copyright interests, then there will be less innovation. Thus the genius of its rule was that it said essentially this: if your technology is “capable” of a “substantial noninfringing use,” then the question of whether your technology should be permitted is no longer a judicial question. If it is capable of a substanial noninfringing use, then the question of balancing (which is always at the core of copyright) is left up to Congress.

The judges don’t get announced in a case in the 7th Circuit before the argument, so we can’t know who will hear the case. But if you’re anywhere close to Chicago, you should go see the argument. It is said that Aimee Deep will be there. But whether true or not, the freedom of that spirit will at least have a chance in Chicago. Continue reading →

From Sarah Lai Stirland’s post: A picture of the current concentration. Continue reading →

Turner has a great piece in the Post about the dangers in Michael Powell’s June 2 proposal. Continue reading →

According to friends at the wonderful Bumperactive.com, Starbucks says it has no policy about non-media photographs in its stores. Someone should tell the stores… Continue reading →

Scott Leverenz has built a page to collect the results of the weekend photography exercise at your favorite coffee shop. Check it out here. Thanks, Scott! Continue reading →

Dean: “”In my travels around the country, I have discovered that this proposed
deregulation is one of the foremost issues on peoples’ minds. I am asked
about it everywhere–in small towns in New Hampshire, and in major cities
across the nation.”

Read his letter to Chairman Powell. Continue reading →

There were an extraordinary number of people who took up the Starbucks’s challenge. Check out the links here and lots elsewhere on the web.

There were many in the comments to the challenge who suggested there was nothing wrong with Starbucks exercising control over its own property. Of course that is right. And of course it is right that Starbucks should have the right to control people who are bothering people with their cameras, just as Starbucks has the right to control people who are bothering others with a radio. And of course it is right that Starbucks has the right even to be extremist about it — banning anyone who clicks even a picture of a friend, invoking mysterious claims about security or trade-secrets.

But if they exercise these rights to an extreme, then of course we have the right to criticize their extremism. We have the right to link their extremism to a growing phascism about photographs. (See the wonderful summary of your rights by Bert Krages.) For it is bizarre that we increasingly live in this world where every movement is captured by a camera, yet increasingly, ordinary people are not permitted to take pictures with cameras. This is yet another part of a growing obsession with control that seems to mark so much of this society. At a minimum, we have a right to take note of this control, and criticize it where we can.

That’s just what I wondered about when I read these stories about Starbucks’. I’m a terribly untrendy sort — I like Starbucks. But I couldn’t quite tell whether the extremism of these stories was an exception or a policy. And I guess I was relieved to read, and to find, at least some stores where the manager of a place that loves to imagine itself a public place was actually giving members of the public a freedom to feel like they are in public. I understand of course — as everyone should — that this “feeling” is just virtual. It can be withdrawn at anytime. Continue reading →

Frank Rich has a great piece in the Times today about MediaCon.

” Though liberal and conservative organizations alike, from Common Cause to the National Rifle Association, are protesting this further consolidation of media power, most of the country is oblivious to it. That’s partly because the companies that program America’s matrix have shut out all but bare-bones coverage of the imminent F.C.C. action, much as the ruling machines in “The Matrix” do not feed their captive humans any truths that might set them free.”

If you think Frank Rich is right, you might want to write the NY Times and ask, why is it the Times has “shut out all but bare-bones coverage of the imminent F.C.C. action”? Continue reading →