Brad Stone propose, dans un article du New York Times, que les services de musique numérique légaux gagnent du terrain face aux moyens illégaux d’obtenir la musique :

Two recent studies of online behavior contribute to this optimistic view. In June, two British research agencies, MusicAlly and The Leading Question, generated a wave of headlines in the tech press after reporting that the percentage of 14- to 18-year-olds using file-sharing services at least once a month dropped to 26 percent in January 2009 from 42 percent in December 2007.

Similarly, a survey by the NPD Group in the United States this spring found that teenagers aged 13 to 17 illegally downloaded 6 percent fewer tracks in 2008 than in 2007, while more than half said they were now listening to legal online radio services like Pandora, up from 34 percent the year before.

Le Sismographe, le carnet culturel des journalistes du quotidien montréalais Le Devoir, rapporte le cas d’un internaute des USA qui a téléchargé près de 3000 photos du Musée national du portrait (MNP) au Royaume-Uni. Selon Wiki News,

he complaint by the NPG is that under UK law, its copyright in the photographs of its portraits is being violated. While the gallery has complained to the Wikimedia Foundation for a number of years, this is the first direct threat of legal action made against an actual uploader of images. In addition to the allegation that Coetzee had violated the NPG’s copyright, they also allege that Coetzee had, by uploading thousands of images in bulk, infringed the NPG’s database right, breached a contract with the NPG; and circumvented a copyright protection mechanism on the NPG’s web site.

The copyright protection mechanism referred to is Zoomify, a product of Zoomify, Inc. of Santa Cruz, California. NPG’s solicitors stated in their letter that « Our client used the Zoomify technology to protect our client’s copyright in the high resolution images. ». Zoomify Inc. states in the Zoomify support documentation that its product is intended to make copying of images « more difficult » by breaking the image into smaller pieces and disabling the option within many web browsers to click and save images, but that they « provide Zoomify as a viewing solution and not an image security system ».

In particular, Zoomify’s website comments that while « many customers — famous museums for example » use Zoomify, in their experience a « general consensus » seems to exist that most museums are concerned to make the images in their galleries accessible to the public, rather than prevent the public from accessing them or making copies; they observe that a desire to prevent high resolution images being distributed would also imply prohibiting the sale of any posters or production of high quality printed material that could be scanned and placed online.

Appropriation du domaine public par un musée et libération par un robin des bois numérique? Cas de violation de contrat d’utilisation d’un site par un individu obtus? Le débat est lancé…

Le conseil d’administration de l’Association of Research Libraries a voté une résolution incitant ses membres à ne pas signer des entented ou des licences d’accès à de la documentation qui contiennent des clauses de confidentialité des termes dudit contrat. Selon le site de ce groupe de bibliothèques universitaires,

The Board adopted this position at the ARL Membership Meeting in Houston, Texas, on May 22. The resolution was prepared in response to the concerns of membership that, as the amount of licensed content has increased, especially through packages of publications, nondisclosure or confidentiality clauses have had a negative impact on effective negotiations. The Scholarly Communication Steering Committee took the position that an open market will result in better licensing terms. In their discussions, the committee also noted the value of encouraging research projects and other efforts to gather information about the current market and licensing terms, such as an initiative being undertaken by Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara, Paul Courant, University of Michigan, and Preston McAfee, Cal Tech, to acquire information on bundled site-license contracts. A panel session on collaboration held later in the Membership Meeting included informal polls of members and the results indicated high levels of agreement and a positive commitment for making this information public when possible.

Les 19 et 20 juin avait lieu la Open Video Conference à la ville de New York.

video platform
video management
video solutions
free video player

Selon le site de l’événement,

As internet video matures, we face a crossroads: will technology and public policy support a more participatory culture—one that encourages and enables free expression and broader cultural engagement? Or will online video become a glorified TV-on-demand service, a central part of a permissions-based culture? Web video holds tremendous potential, but limits on broadband, playback technology, and fair use threaten to undermine the ability of individuals to engage in dialogues in and around this new media ecosystem.
Open Video is a broad-based movement of video creators, technologists, academics, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, activists, remixers, and many others. When most folks think of “open,” they think of open source and open codecs. They’re right—but there’s much more to Open Video. Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online.

YouTube and other online video applications are rightly celebrated for empowering end-users; however, online video lacks some of the essential qualities that make text and images on the web such powerful tools for free speech and technical innovation. Email, blogs, and other staples of the open web rely on ubiquitous and interoperable technologies that have low barriers to entry; they are massively decentralized and resistant to censorship or regulation. Video, meanwhile, relies on centralized distribution and proprietary technologies which can threaten cultural discourse and innovation.

Open Video is about the legal and social norms surrounding online video. It’s the ability to attach the license of your choice to videos you publish. It’s about media consolidation, aggregation, and decentralization. It’s about fair use. In short, it’s about a lot of things, and that’s why this conference is going to be so exciting!

Merci à Frédéric Dubois pour le tuyau!

Le groupe MIT Free Culture de l’université éponyme de Boston vient de lancer le site YouTomb (http://youtomb.mit.edu/), un site qui recense des vidéos retirés de YouTube à cause d’une plainte de violation du droit d’auteur. Selon le site,

YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation.

More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.

Au même moment, le quotidien britannique The Guardian publie un article intéressant sur la « CopyFraud » – néologisme qui évoque une appropriation inéquitable d’une oeuvre dans le domaine public par une corporation (Charles Eicher, Copyfraud: Poisoning the public domain) :

Committing copyfraud is astonishingly easy and costs nothing. I can borrow a public domain book from any library and scan it, or I could download the text from Project Gutenberg. I reformat it as a PDF, mark it with a copyright date, register it as a new book with an ISBN, then submit it to Amazon.com for sale. I may not even need to print and bind any books, I can offer it through Amazon’s Booksurge print-on-demand service, or as an ebook on Kindle. Once the book is listed for sale, I can submit it to Google Books for inclusion in its index. I could easily publish thousands of books; most would never sell, but with zero up-front cost, any sale is pure profit.

Merci à Jeff Roberts et son IP News This Week.

L’Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) annonce le lancement d’une trousse d’information à l’intention du secteur de l’éducation. Le site de l’association de défense des droits des usagers du numérique aux USA précise que :

As the entertainment industry promotes its new anti-copying educational program to the nation’s teachers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched its own « Teaching Copyright » curriculum and website to help educators give students the real story about their digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond.

The Copyright Alliance — backed by the recording, broadcast, and software industries — has given its curriculum the ominous title « Think First, Copy Later. » This is just the latest example of copyright-focused educational materials portraying the use of new technology as a high-risk behavior. For example, industry materials have routinely compared downloading music to stealing a bicycle, even though many downloads are lawful, and making videos using short clips from other sources is treated as probably illegal even though many such videos are also lawful. EFF created Teaching Copyright as a balanced curriculum encouraging students to make full and fair use of technology that is revolutionizing learning and the exchange of information.

Le site de l’EFF fait la promotion de l’utilisation équitable et du domaine public, plutôt que d’autres approches à l’appropriation du contenu culturel numérique. La trousse d’éducation, nommée « Teaching Copyright, » est disponible gratuitement dans Internet.

La Dance Heritage Coalition (USA) annonce la publication de lignes directrices pour la préservation et la diffusion du patrimoine documentaire du milieu de la danse.

Le document intitulé « Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use of Dance-related Materials: Recommendations for Librarians, Archivists, Curators, and Other Collections Staff » est disponible en format PDF.

Ne manquez pas la réflexion de Clive Thompson dans Wired Magazine à propos du futur de la lecture dans le monde numérique.

Merci au fil de nouvelles de l’Association des bibliothèques de recherche du Canada (ABRC), aussi disponible en fil RSS.

L’Office of the US Trade Representative (le ministre des affaires commerciales extérieur des USA) annonce la publication de son rapport annuel dans le cadre de la revue des pratiques en propriété intellectuelle de ses partenaires commerciaux, mis en oeuvre par la section 301 de son Code (2009 Special 301 Report).

Ce document liste les pays cancres en matière de protection et mise en oeuvre de la propriété intellectuelle. Fait inusité, le Canada est listé sur la liste prioritaire de pays à surveiller, tout comme la Chine et la Russie.

Comme le précise le professeur Michael Geist dans son blogue , dans une entrevue et sur le site de la BBC, le titulaire de la chaire de recherche en droit et Internet à l’Université d’Ottawa précise que cette situation met en lumière la nature douteuse de ce rapport qui ne semble pas avoir de méthodologie claire et puise largement dans les revendications des lobbys industriels. D’ailleurs, sur le site de la BBC il précise :

Canada may move beyond behind-the-scenes discussions now that it finds itself on the Priority Watch List alongside China, Russia, and Indonesia. If so, it would likely remind the US that it is compliant with its international copyright obligations. In recent years, it responded to US pressure by becoming one of the few countries to enact anti-camcording legislation. Law enforcement has prioritised intellectual property cases and the law contains tough statutory damages provisions that are regularly used by rights holders to obtain significant judgments.

Moreover, grouping Canada together with high-piracy nations does not stand up to even mild scrutiny. The Business Software Alliance’s 2008 statistics show that among the 11 other countries on this year’s Priority Watch List for which data is available, the lowest rate of software piracy is 66%. By comparison, Canada stands at 32%, not remotely close to any other country on the list. In fact, Canada’s software piracy rate is lower than all 46 countries named in the Special 301 report.

Similarly, 2008 data from the US Customs and Border Protection Agency on intellectual property seizures reports that Taiwan and South Korea rank fourth and fifth as sources of seized goods (China is number one), yet both were dropped this year from the Watch List. By comparison, Canada does not even appear in the rankings.

Voici le sommaire proposé par le US Trade Representative :

Canada will be added to the Priority Watch List in 2009. The United States appreciates the high level of cooperation between our two governments in many important bilateral and multilateral IPR initiatives. The United States also welcomed the Government of Canada’s reaffirmation earlier this year of its 2007 and 2008 commitments to improve IPR protection and enforcement. However, the Government of Canada has not delivered on these commitments by promptly and effectively implementing key copyright reforms. The United States continues to have serious concerns with Canada’s failure to accede to and implement the WIPO Internet Treaties, which Canada signed in 1997. We urge Canada to enact legislation in the near term to strengthen its copyright laws and implement these treaties. The United States also continues to urge Canada to improve its IPR enforcement system to enable authorities to take effective action against the trade in counterfeit and pirated products within Canada, as well as curb the volume of infringing products transshipped and transiting through Canada. Canada’s weak border measures continue to be a serious concern for IP owners. The United States hopes that Canada will implement legislative changes to provide a stronger border enforcement system by giving its customs officers the authority to seize products suspected of being pirated or counterfeit without the need for a court order. The provision of additional resources and training to customs officers and domestic law enforcement personnel would enhance IPR enforcement. The United States will continue to follow Canada’s progress toward providing an adequate and effective IPR protection and enforcement regime, including near term accession to and implementation of the WIPO Internet Treaties and improved border enforcement.

Professeur Mossoff de la George Mason University nous propose un article sur l’apparition du premier « chasseur de brevets  » (patent troll). Cette expression est employée pour désigner un organisme qui s’accapare de plusieurs brevets dans le seul but éventuel de revendre les droits à profit, sans jamais avoir l’intention de les employer dans un contexte de production industrielle. Le professeur nous apprend des déboires de l’industrie des machines à coudre du milieu du 19e siècle.