Category Archives: Law: Copyright and DMCA

The Adobe AIR license agreement contains a number of onerous and non-standard terms.

I was going to give MiniTask a spin (”a light-weight task manager with a surprising number of features”), but having read these I don't think I'll bother.

3.1 Adobe Runtime Restrictions. You will not use any Adobe Runtime on any non-PC device or with any embedded or device version of any operating system. For the avoidance of doubt, and by example only, you may not use an Adobe Runtime on any (a) mobile device, set top box (STB), handheld, phone, web pad, tablet and Tablet PC (other than with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and its successors), game console, TV, DVD player, media center (other than with Windows XP Media Center Edition and its successors), electronic billboard or other digital signage, Internet appliance or other Internet-connected device, PDA, medical device, ATM, telematic device, gaming machine, home automation system, kiosk, remote control device, or any other consumer electronics device, (b) operator-based mobile, cable, satellite, or television system or (c) other closed system device. For information on licensing Adobe Runtimes for use on such systems please visit http://www.adobe.com/go/licensing .
3.2 Adobe Reader Restrictions. Adobe Reader is licensed and distributed by Adobe for viewing, distributing and sharing PDF files.
3.2.1 Conversion Restrictions. You will not integrate or use Adobe Reader with any other software, plug-in or enhancement that uses or relies upon Adobe Reader when converting or transforming PDF files into a different format (e.g., a PDF file into a TIFF, JPEG, or SVG file).
3.2.2 Plug-in Restrictions. You will not integrate or use Adobe Reader with any plug-in software not developed in accordance with the Adobe Integration Key License Agreement.
3.2.3 Disabled Features. Adobe Reader may contain features or functionalities that are hidden or appear disabled or “grayed out” (the “Disabled Features”). Disabled Features will activate only when opening a PDF document that was created using enabling technology available only from Adobe. You will not access, or attempt to access, any Disabled Features other than through the use of such enabling technologies, nor will you rely on Adobe Reader to create a feature substantially similar to any Disabled Feature or otherwise circumvent the technology that controls activation of any such feature. For more information on disabled features, please refer to http://www.adobe.com/go/readerextensions .

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6.1 Use of PDF Files. When you use the Software to open a PDF file that has been enabled to display ads through registration with the Ads for Adobe PDF service, your computer may connect to a website operated by Adobe, an advertiser, or other third party. Your Internet Protocol (IP) address is sent when this happens. The party hosting the site may use technology to send (or “serve”) advertising or other electronic content that appears in or near the opened file. The website operator may also use JavaScript, web beacons (also known as action tags or single-pixel gifs), and other technologies to increase and measure the effectiveness of advertisements and to personalize advertising content. Your communication with Adobe websites is governed by the Adobe Online Privacy Policy found at http://www.adobe.com/go/privacy . Adobe may not have access to or control over features that a third party may use, and the information practices of third party websites are not covered by the Adobe Online Privacy Policy.

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8.3 Acknowledgement. You agree that (a) a digital certificate may have been revoked prior to the time of verification, making the digital signature or certificate appear valid when in fact it is not, (b) the security or integrity of a digital certificate may be compromised due to an act or omission by the signer of the document, the applicable Certificate Authority, or any other third party and (c) a certificate may be a self-signed certificate not provided by a Certificate Authority. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO RELY ON A CERTIFICATE. UNLESS A SEPARATE WRITTEN WARRANTY IS PROVIDED TO YOU BY A CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY, YOU USE DIGITAL CERTIFICATES AT YOUR SOLE RISK.

8.4 Third Party Beneficiaries. You agree that any Certificate Authority you rely upon is a third party beneficiary of this agreement and shall have the right to enforce this agreement in its own name as if it were Adobe.

8.5 Indemnity. You agree to hold Adobe and any applicable Certificate Authority (except as expressly provided in its terms and conditions) harmless from any and all liabilities, losses, actions, damages, or claims (including all reasonable expenses, costs, and attorneys fees) arising out of or relating to any use of, or reliance on, any service of such authority, including, without limitation (a) reliance on an expired or revoked certificate, (b) improper verification of a certificate, (c) use of a certificate other than as permitted by any applicable terms and conditions, this agreement or applicable law; (d) failure to exercise reasonable judgment under the circumstances in relying on issuer services or certificates or (e) failure to perform any of the obligations as required in the terms and conditions related to the services.

I was particularly struck by the attempts to block use on anything other than PC, the attempt to block interoperability with other software, and the claim that a certificate offered by a CA is a worthless piece of paper (something I was predicting and complaining about way back in 1996, see The Essential Role of Trusted Third Parties in Electronic Commerce, 75 Ore. L. Rev. 49 (1996).

[Note: headline corrected, thanks to Tom Parmenter]

British survey findings on young people's music ownership show that teenagers and students have an average of more than 800 illegally copied songs each on their digital music players.

Here is an excerpt: The research also showed that half of 14 to 24-year-olds were happy to share all the music on their hard drive, enabling others to copy hundreds, or thousands, of songs at any one time. Although illegal copying has become widespread, the scale of the problem uncovered by the University of Hertfordshire left the music industry surprised. On average every iPod or digital music player contained 842 illegally copied songs. Fergal Sharkey, former lead singer of the Undertones and now chief executive of British Music Rights, said: “I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before. But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected.”

I don’t see what there is to be surprised about. Even if the entertainment industry’s scare tactics (lawsuits) have moved file-sharing traffic away from major P2P sites to smaller sites and various torrents, the overall volume of sharing might still be high. Besides, free copynorms among young people are not going away. My own study on the interaction between deterrence and copynorms shows that scare tactics may strengthen pro-copy norms among file-sharers. This new study shows just how much portable storage capacity boosted off line sharing.

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The Great Grimmelmann writes in The Laboratorium: Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law that he's

just released Copyright, Technology, and Access to the Law: An Opinionated Primer:

Recently, the state of Oregon has used copyright law to threaten people who were publishing its laws online. Can they really do that? More to the point, why would they? This essay will put the Oregon fracas in historical context, and explain the public policies at stake. Ultimately, it’ll try to convince you that Oregon’s demands, while wrong, aren’t unprecedented. People have been claiming copyright in “the law” for a long time, and at times they’ve been able to make a halfway convincing case for it. While there are good answers to these arguments, they’re not always the first ones that come to hand. It’s really only the arrival of the Internet that genuinely puts the long-standing goal of free and unencumbered access to the law within our grasp.

This isn’t an academic piece. Instead, it’s designed to bring nonlawyers and people outside the open-access-to-law movement up to speed on the basics of the history, the context, the principles, and the law. Along the way, it tells some interesting stories. I hope you’ll find it equal parts informative, entertaining, and inspirational. Please have a look.

A fun read and a public service.

Being a big fan of Grant McCracken's “This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics” I was a little startled to see a post snippet pop up in my feed reader that said,

I was talking in Vancouver yesterday. The slide that everyone seemed to like the best has “shoot the lawyers” as its title.

Fortunately, when you go to the full text, the above is immediately followed by,

My argument is that we have to be much more free with our intellectual property.

I'm OK with that, and in time it should be possible to explain to Prof. McCracken that current IP policies are not primarily the fault of lawyers but rather of incumbent content-provision industries trying to protect their business models. Yes, they often hire lawyers (and Senators) to do their dirty work, but those are just the means not the sources.

Lawsuit Claim: Students' Lecture Notes Infringe on Professor's Copyright:

University of Florida professor Michael Moulton thinks copyright law protects the lectures he gives to his students, and he's headed to court to prove it.

Moulton and his e-textbook publisher are suing Thomas Bean, who runs a company that repackages and sells student notes, arguing that the business is illegal since notes taken during college lectures violate the professor's copyright.

Faulkner Press filed suit in a Florida court Tuesday against the the owner of Einstein's Notes, which sells “study kits” for classes, including Professor Michael Moulton's course on “Wildlife Issues in the New Millennium.”

Those notes are illegal, Faulkner and Moulton contend, since they are derivative works of the professor's copyrighted lectures.

As a doctrinal matter, it seems to me that the prof here has a respectable case. (See the complaint.)

It's important, though, to note some key facts. First, we're not talking about a claim that students can't take notes for their own use — of course they can.

Second, there shouldn't be any doubt that fair use allows students to share notes with other students in the same class in the same year.

Third, I'd argue that fair use extends to sharing notes with other students in the same school, at least if no money changes hands.

Fourth, if students take what they learn and write their own treatment of the subject, that's not copyright infringement, that's wonderful.

If the facts alleged are accurate, however, there are three facts in this case which take it far outside those situations. First, the student was selling the work online for money. Second, it competed with a similar product by the professor. Third, they were pretty similar — the value added by the student over straight transcription is alleged to be not that great.

I've been trying to imagine how I'd feel if a student of mine did something like this. Part of me would admire the entrepreneurial spirit. How the rest of me felt would depend greatly on which course it was. I think for anything I teach out of a casebook, my only issue would be whether the existence of an easily available customized crutch would hamper the learning experience for future students. A big chunk of the originality in a course like Administrative Law is in the selection and arrangement of cases and materials in the casebook; I think — I hope! — I add something valuable to the base, but I doubt very strongly that it's enough to be worth suing over. (One might think that given they're all about the same basic area of law, the books themselves must be very similar, but this is not so.)

But two out of the three courses I'm teaching this year are based on my own materials, put together with some considerable pain and effort. The syllabuses are online, freely available, and one has lots of links to the materials as well; for both I also provide online a series of discussion questions, also viewable by the public.

Legal issues aside, if a student just republished all this for profit without permission, even it the publication credited me in some way, I don't think I'd be pleased: I'd rather the money, if there's going to be some, go to me or to a charity I liked than into the pockets of a somewhat random corporation and/or individual. Of course, there could come a point where the student's addition of original commentary took it out of the realm of simple copying; that might be different. But short of that, I would not be pleased.

I'd be curious to hear, though, how current (and former) students feel about this.