June 11, 2008
Copyright and Limits
Rasmus Fleischer, writing for Cato Unbound, makes the argument that the atavistic way we think about copyright is a poor fit for the digital age:
Creative practices, with some exceptions, thrive in economies where digital abundance is connected to scarce qualities in space and time. But there can never be a question of finding one universal business model for a world without copyright. The more urgent question regards what price we will have to pay for upholding the phantasm of universal copyright.
The glorious advent of the digital bit freed us from so many of the limits of the analog age, but those limits still drive the way we still think about copyright. The simplest example is one that Rasmus uses, where we draw distinctions without difference between and streaming (kinda okay) and downloading (terrifying) because we want to retrofit our ideas to the old z100 vs. Tower Records model. It's certainly tricky to draw bright lines when the one between our personal consumption of content and the distribution over our social networks is incredibly fuzzy; that's what makes Muxtape -- where you can create and share mixtapes with all your millions of online friends -- so head scratching. But rather than Washington and industry trying to draw the largest bounty from the end of scarcity, when it comes to legislating copyright we seem to be quite dedicated to constantly finding new ways to recreate the old chains that limited what we were able to do. (via Ezra Klein)
copyright, Muxtape
July 31, 2008
And Introducing, Wordscraper
Scrabulous is back, new name, new look.
copyright, Facebook, patent, Scrabulous, trademark
July 29, 2008
Scrabulous Pulled
Scrabulous has been pulled from Facebook, but only, it seems, for those of us in North America. The likely reason is that Hasbro, the company that has been going after the app, reportedly only has digital rights to Scrabble in this part of the world.
Related: a Q&A with Public Knowledge's Alex Curtis on the battle over Scrabulous.
copyright, Facebook, Scrabulous, trademark
June 10, 2008
How Magicians Protect Their Ideas
Speaking of copyright, magicians protect their tricks much like French chefs protect their recipes -- through social norms and informal sanctions.
copyright, creative content, sanctions
June 10, 2008
Designers Include Copyright Notice for Added Touch of Class
Why are public interest groups copyrighting their stuff unnecessarily? Yeah, current law attaches copyright to what you create whether you post notice or not, but as for notices on websites go I suspect that there's some amount of bad habit involved. Back when I was building websites for a living and didn't know any better, I'd automatically stick a copyright note in the template footer for my clients because I thought it made the site look more "official."
Ha, I just dug up this case in point: "Copyright © 2001 by Icon Chess Foundation | Created by Scolaworks"
copyright, design
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