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Is Copy Right necessarily the same thing as Digital Right?
I cannot understand why there should be an apparent gap in the debate between the rising concern over Copy Right on file sharing sites and the work that has been done on Digital Rights over the last few years. To quote from a recent newspaper article; ‘YouTube can identify spam, porn, and hate speech, but not copyrighted material. Come on!’ The point is obvious with two threads to the discussion; the motivation; and the technology; however it does leave some further questions on definitions in a digital society unaddressed. The assumption is that we can use technology to manage the current status of copyright law built around definitions formed with no concept of the digital content that is increasingly at the centre of our society.
The topic being aired in the popular press, and increasingly in the courts, is the motivation, so plenty of other places to read about that. However, I am not sure that the topic is really hitting the issues that a Web 2.0 environment has created, and will carry on creating, which will also lead to what might happen with the exploitation of loosely coupled services ripped from SOA processes.
This whole point came home very clearly when a post to one of my recent blogs on MashUps pointed out that you could create a new site, and a new business, by mashing together other sites content, and he wasn’t sure that there was anything to prevent this being done in the law right now. In short what we thought of as Copy Right works for a document as an unaltered image, but gets a bit hazy when we merge elements together and create something new from the pieces. But is this necessary true? The best case study to try to figure out the issues is the music industry.
So back to the future with the emergence of MashUps as a music form in the hands of the technology competent together with the concerns as to the legality; and forward to today at http://www.splicemusic.com/ where we can get help to ‘splice’ together our own music. Okay so the music industry is on the way to resolving this area after many court cases, and a whole lot of money, but actually it's still sticking plaster on the old model, with its definitions of copyright as applied in the music industry. Actually no, it may yet not turn out to be a long term workable solution. The trigger for this Blog is to found in full at http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/19164/ which is reporting a deliberate attempt by those who see themselves as creators of a new generation of music by creating ‘unique’ MashUps to break the law in such a way it will create a total reformation, or as they say ‘we aim to MashUp the law’. So the sticking plaster may yet fall off!
Keep in mind this background from the music industries encounter with the impact of the digital society, and start thinking about what happens within a fully digital business trading environment based on loosely coupled granular services. Makes me think very carefully about the potential exposure to some of these issues, and gives me a big urge to return to looking at the work done on digital rights by the industry to date. Try http://www.digitalrights.dk/ as a starting point for a more thoughtful approach about understanding this better.
Posted by Andy Mulholland on April 9, 2007 in
Methodologies
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Comments
# on April 10, 2007 1:48 AM, Anonymous said:
It's interesting that in terms of music, a 'mashup' is nothing new at all. Hip-Hop artists rely on samples to create beats, and any commercial release requires licensing. I also recall a lawsuit regarding The Verve's "Bitter Sweet Symphony", which accused the band of using a string sample in the song without licensing it properly. More recently, the Australian band 'Jet' rose to popularity by directly copying an Iggy Pop riff and changing the lyrics.
The really interesting cases are when it's impossible to license everything used, such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osymyso#Intro-Inspection
which samples the introductions to 101 songs. Could he be expected to obtain licenses for each of those songs? If not, should that prohibit it being released as a work?
# on April 11, 2007 5:24 AM, Niraj J said:
Two points:
1. To me a legal Mashup is something that uses a published API from a vendor to deliver the Mashup. Hacking with the HTML or a public format to deliver the content is a violation . I learnt this the hardway
refer: http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2007/02/mashups_rapidly_are_becoming_a.php#comment-308
2. Now to the point of building a business out of merging two websites. Well you can do it , but how sustainable is your business when you do not have a relationship with your data provider. Case in point myMaps(screwed up several millions in venture caps) http://mashable.com/2007/04/05/google-mymaps/
The point being that your data provider has the power to turn the switch off anytime.
Note you cannot really compare this to the music industry as by creating the music mashup you can still continue making money inspite of you having a hostile relationship with the creator of the original. The only thing that the creator can do is try to fight it in courts while you continue selling CD's
To me the ambiguity in the legal aspects of Mashup is not as bad as say the issue of distribution of copyrighted digital content via P2P technologies.
# on April 13, 2007 11:52 PM, Niraj J said:
Here is a very interesting post on this topic.
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/topic/mashups/
# on April 14, 2007 12:00 AM, Niraj J said:
Sorry the actual link is
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2007/02/13/mashup_bill_of_rights/
It is about Bill of rights for Mashup developers.
Note that the redmonk guys are the leading industry analysts on open source and their customer include SUn , microsoft , ibm
# on April 19, 2007 10:44 AM, andy mulholland said:
This topic seems to be 'getting to' some of the content providers. just seen another site 'down' while material is checked for copyright infringement.
andy