Year: 2008

Earlier today at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference, a speaker said “[Canadians] as a culture like to watch what people are doing, and we’re right next door to the biggest zoo in the world.”

Moments later, as if in response to this satement, someone instant-messaged me a link to a picture of this button, which was being sold at this past weekend’s Texas State Republican Convention:

Also seen at the convention was merch with these slogans:

• Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Deportation
• I will hold my nose when I vote for McCain

Charming. It’s almost as if they’re trying to prove the adage “Liberals by and large are fools, and conservatives by and large are villains.”

On the bright side, Republicans Michael Williams and Mike Huckabee were also there praising the advance of Barack Obama and what it means towards a colorblind society. So maybe there’s still hope.

Once again, I’m at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference, covering the presentations. I’m still working my way through crunching yesterday’s presentations, but I though I’d give you folks a taste with this graphic, which is based on a key point from Fredrick Marckini’s keynote presentation from yesterday morning:

I’ll have more from the conference soon, and I’ll post it both here and in Global Nerdy.

Even Sith lords have rough nights:

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

My thanks to the folks at Yahoo! for loaning me part of their “Code Monkey” costume.

Welcome to Ignatz & Copyright, the first in a series of articles in which I, along with you the readers, will explore the debate over copyright, Canada’s Bill C-61, the American DMCA and related matters. If you want to find the inspiration behind this series, read the entry title Ignatz Zayats and the Copyright Debate, as well as the comments.

I thought I’d start by providing a quick definition of “copyright”, just to make sure that we’re all talking about the same thing. Copyright is a compound word, and in this entry, I’m going to look at the “right” in “copyright”.

First, the “Right”…

The “right” in “copyright” refers to the set of exclusive legal rights granted to creators over their works for a limited period of time. These rights boil down to:

• The right to copy the work
• The right to recognition for creating the work
• The right to distribute (or say who can distribute) copies of the work to the public by selling, renting or lending it
• The right to perform, display or transmit (or say who can perform, display or transmit) the work in public
• The right to prepare derivative works (or say who can prepare derivative works) based upon the work

Copyright’s intent, to borrow the words of the “Copyright Clause” in the U.S. Constitution, is to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. By creating a legal mechanism for creators to be compensated, creators can make a living, and are given an incentive to continue creating works.

As I mentioned earlier, copyright is granted for a limited period of time. Once this period of time passes, the work enters the public domain, at which point it can be freely used and adapted by anyone.

Links

• Wikipedia entry for “Copyright”
• “What is Copyright?” on the U.S. Copyright Office’s site
• “What is a Copyright?” on the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s site

[This article was also posted on Global Nerdy.]

Fredrick Marckini.

I’m sitting in the press room of the Search Engine Strategies 2008 Toronto conference as I write this. I’m here on a press pass arranged for me by Byron Gordon of SEO-PR and in exchange, I’ll be publishing blog entries from the conference over the next couple of days.

Fredrick Marckini’s Opening Keynote

The opening keynote by Fredrick Marckini, Chief Global Search Officer of Isobar, was quite good. For a guy like me — I’ve been more concerned about application development and technical evangelism than search engine marketing — it was a pretty good introduction to the search engine marketing and trends to watch for. Not only did Marckini present a lot of useful information (especially to an SEM newbie like me), but he presented with style and humor and kept the audience engaged — not an easy thing first thing in the morning.

I took copious notes and once I’ve formatted them, I’ll post them here.

The Best Thing in the Goodie Bag

It’s not a tech conference unless there’s a goodie bag, and this one is no exception. I always find uses for them, and the ones for this conference are pretty decent:

The goodie bag at SES Toronto.

They’re trying to make this conference a little more green, so they’ve kept the paper contents of the goodie bag quite lean, limited to the conference agenda magazine, a few sheets of administrivial paper and the best thing, the book Meatball Sundae, written by my favourite marketing guru, Seth Godin:

The best thing in the goodie bag: Meatball Sundae, by Seth Godin.

I’m looking forward to reading it.

My Asshole Lawyer Friend Ignatz

Artist’s rendition of Ignatz Zayats.

Pictured above is an artist’s rendition of Ignatz Zayats, asshole and occasional commenter on this blog. He’s a lawyer with a practice somewhere in the Greater Accordion City area; he got his law degree from the U of Zero.

About half of the comments that Ignatz posts never see the light of day because they’re generally dickish enough to merit deletion. From the rest of his comments, you might be tempted to conclude that he is a douchebag. I beg to differ; if you can get past the first impression, you will find that he is, in fact, more of a colostomy bag.

Oh, I kid. I kid because I love.

Ignatz — and yes, it’s a pseudonym — is an old friend of mine. We go back all the way to 1979, where we spent a terrifying sixth grade under the tutelage of Brother D., who had no compunctions about smacking his students Ike Turner-style. For reasons that neither of us can quite explain, we chose to stay there not just through middle school, but high school as well, where among other things, we played in a band (there’s at least one funny story there), ran some dances, cut some classes, had a falling out or two and generally hung out. I continue to count him among my friends for a couple of reasons:

1. To borrow a Henry Kissinger line, he may be an asshole, but he’s our asshole.

2. If there is a Hell, he will likely go there when he dies, whereupon he will end up climbing the ranks and become part of the administration. I like having connections in as many places as possible.

Everyone should have at least one Eric Cartman-esque pal like Ignatz, even if only to develop some coping-with-assholes skills. Every blogger needs a small stable of Ignatz-style readers for the same reason — and also because it never hurts to occasionally be called out, even if you’re right.

The Copyright Debate

So far, Ignatz is the only one who’s written to me either in the comments or email who’s been in support of Bill C-61, often referred to as “Canada’s DMCA”, the proposed copyright bill that seems to have been custom-written to the specifications of the American entertainment industry lobby.

In response to the article “Canada’s DMCA”, a.k.a. Bill C-61, Wasn’t Written for You and Me, he wrote:

If I was a professional musician & I spent all of my hours writing music so that I can make a measely $0.10 in royalties every now & then just to pay my rent & put food on my table, then Joe Public who downloads my music for free is stealing from me.

You have to protect the intellectual property that the writer owns to give them income & an incentive to create more music. Otherwise, why should they make the effort to begin with? After all, which of you here would go to work tomorrow if you knew you weren’t going to get paid for YOUR efforts?

It’s really no different than computer programs & books, generally-speaking. Lend a book out to friends so they can read it. But if you’re making thousands of copies for friends, then the writer only made royalties from the sale of your 1 book while the copies you made enriched 1000s of your friends, for free.

Tell me how that is fair to the writer.

Geez, you would think that some of youwould advocate that file sharing/free downloads of computer programs like MS Office, etc. should be allowed. After all, in principle what’s the difference between my file of MS Office or David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ other theat the complexities & size of the file itself? If it’s obviously wrong to freely share computer programs without the author’s consent, then the same should apply to music files.

Someone spent time & effort to create something. Stop being cheap and pay them $0.99 for the bloody download instead of looking for the freebie. What’s the matter? Can’t spare the loonie?

and, later on:

Professor Geist’s position is that that the Copyright Act traditionally (& explicitly) allows for copying of protected materials for private use, research, private study, criticism, and news reporting. He posits that Bill C-61 denies you that opportunity if you unlock the digital codes. And while he may be right, the issue is that this is the dictum from Parliament itself. (Side note: He teaches at the school that gave me one of my degrees. A lot of the minds there are all a ‘little’ off the centre line. In fact, IMHO, I can’t think of one true centrist or conservative full prof at that institution, except for the tax guru there. I think it’s the lead in the Ottawa municipal drinking water.)

My God, how many copies do you need for personal use or private study? Or even to teach? Isn’t 1 enough?

That’s the same Parliament that made it easy for your illegal downloaders not to get charged for royalties by your ISP providers because it enacted s. 2.4(1)(b) of the Copyright Act specifically exempting that collection (and upheld by the Supreme Court in the case – Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v. Canadian Assn. of Internet Providers, [2004] 2 S.C.R. 427, 2004 SCC 45) So you’re happy with one decision of Parliament & upset with another. Hey, you can’t have your cake & eat it too. Go bitch to your MP. See if those Conservative chowderheads will listen at all. (Personally, I can’t stand them myself.)

You’re right in your first line. C-61 was not written for you & me. It was written to protect intellectual property owners. You know, those people who invested time & money to create that masterpiece, ‘Harold & Kumar Go to Rexdale’. Whether it’s a book, a DVD or a song, it’s all copyrighted material & one isn’t different from another (the Court in the SOCAN case made this point when it referenced the prior Supreme Court case of CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 339, 2004 SCC 13 which dealt with alleged copying of lawbooks in the law library).

And while you can make infinite copies of a book for personal or education use, you can’t do it for digital files IF you break the code. Isn’t that more, or less, the same rules for IT programs? (ie. I can copy my MS Office onto X computers, but if I do it on more, then I need a license. Otherwise, I’m breakin’ the law.). So why should it be any different for my Harold & Kumar DVD? If I need more copies, I should get (sorry, pay for) a license from the copyright holder. Right?

If you read the preamble to Bill C-61, it rightfully states that:
“Whereas in the current digital era copyright protection is enhanced when countries adopt coordinated approaches, based on internationally recognized norms;

Whereas such norms are reflected in the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty and the World Intellectual Property Organization Performances and Phonograms Treaty, adopted in Geneva in 1996;

Whereas such norms are not wholly reflected in the Copyright Act;”

the proposed measures in C-61 reflect that Canada has been behind the rest of the world in this domain. Your statement above was that “the law refuses to go forward.” I think instituting standards that are already reflected in other WIPOC countries is moving forward.

The practical reality if this Bill is proclaimed into law is that:
“It’s not like entertainment companies are about to go sue people,” he said. “It’s about people who are making libraries of massive infringement and making them available to their friends that they have over the Internet.” http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=583125

So don’t worry, your multiple copies of Harold & Kumar will go unnoticed by the Copyright Gestapo & you’ll bicycle off into the sunset with a smirk on your face ’cause you just got one over on The Man.

And while Terence Corcoran may have raised your bile level, he wasn’t too far off the mark when he said that this probably won’t make it to law if there’s a fall election. (I don’t have too much time for him either.)

The bottom line is that you need to protect the author & the copyright. Why? Because it’s someone’s property. You’re just buying a license to use it for a limited purpose. If you don’t protect it, the ownership & authorship of this type of property is diminshed & worthless.

If you think so little of intellectual property rights & the need to protect them, let me know so I can start printing up “The Accordion Guy” T-Shirts & Mugs with direct excerpts from this website & copies of your artistic cartoon doodles in my old high school yearbooks, sell them at a premium & keep all of the money to myself. Or how about I get someone to hack the code at your company’s webpages & pass the programs off as my own scripts on a new website. That’s not fair? Exactly.

So please tell me where I’m “wrong, wrong wrong.” And while you’re doing that, please let me know how you would protect the work, sweat and $$ of copyright holders. I’m always open to reasonable suggestions.

With love always,
I.Z.

PS. Don’t people read books anymore?

See what I mean about him being more colostomy bag than douchebag?

Ignatz’ arguments are pretty much aligned with those put forth by the American entertainment lobby. I thought they presented an interesting opportunity to explore the copyright debate, such as the meaning of copyright in the age of digital networks and the effects of laws like the DMCA. For the next little while, I’ll be regularly posting articles exploring copyright issues, as well as Ignatz’ arguments.

You can participate. My readership — I don’t know how many readers I have, but I do know they make for at least 100,000 pageviews per month — is collectively smarter and better-versed in the issues that just me alone. If you have anything to contribute to the debate, whether in the form of a comment or even just a link to relevant article, whether you agree with me or not, please feel free to have your say in the comments!