From Boing Boing: Oregon considers that its laws are copyrighted, thus you cannot reproduce them. The problem stems here from websites that reproduce Oregon laws in full. It may make some sense to make sure that there is only one version of laws out, so as to avoid confusion. The Oregon State Government website, however, has apparently half a million HTML errors and does not satisfy criteria for accessibility. Thus, non-profit, independent operators jumped in.

Oregon holds that illicit replication would impact its own sales of laws. In other words, Oregon wants a monopoly, and it is apparently already providing the good quality that comes with it.

A conference in Amsterdam two weeks ago discussed the "strategies for sustainable access and creative reuse of images and sounds online." There is a lot too read, but for an executive summary, see this blog. From what I gather, open access models are thriving in Europe, as archive maintainers have been able to convince authorities that it was money well spent, if government money is needed at all. There seems to be a general agreement that copyright is counterproductive. And this argument is not coming from theoreticians, but practitioners.

PS: A few minutes after posting this, I stumble on another account of this conference that more specifically looks at examples of some business models. Offering free downloads appears to be perfectly viable...

Pennsylvania has a consumer law that guarantees high prices! According to Pennlive.com:

The 1941 law is intended to prevent businesses from driving others out of business by selling goods at prices below cost. The goal is to protect consumers, because a company that wiped out competitors could then charge any price it wanted.

In this particular case, it prevents Wal-Mart to sell generic prescription drugs for $4, which have to be charged at least $9. Not surprisingly, independent pharmacists are fighting against a change in this law, given that they sell these drugs for $25...

So, we have a law that is supposed to prevent a future monopoly by instituting a cartel.

19-0. There, I said it. The NFL Patriots are apparently pursuing steps to trademark "19-0" and thus hinder any team that would actually have a perfect season from using its actual win-loss result.

The trademark application would not prevent newspapers from using 19-0 in their columns, as the application is visibly only for silly knick knacks with a 19-0 mark. But the principle is vexing, like trademarking three-peat.

The site Make Textbooks Affordable has opened a petition already signed by 1000 faculty to declare "their preference for high-quality, affordable textbooks, including open textbooks, over expensive commercial textbooks." Well, that seems to be like an obvious preference, but I think the point here is to demonstrate that there is a demand for open textbooks, which should encourage some supply to form.

The fact is that there are already quite a few open textbooks. See the list on the site of the petitioners, or Textbook Revolution, or WikiBooks. Finally a list for Economics on IDEAS/RePEc.

Via Marginal Revolution and Boing Boing, Boeing (no relationship) has patented using the moon's gravity to adjust a satellite's orbit. It is however believed the patent would not stand in court, as it is merely rebranding of a physics law. Yet, given legal costs, the satellite is on its way back...

Trademarking a name to prevent others from selling similar goods under a similar name makes only sense if indeed you were the first one to do so since the law was in place. In a fight that has now lasted a decade, the village of Champagne (Switzerland), which happens to be producing wine since at least the 17th century, has been told that it could not use its own name. That name is reserved for wine coming from the French region of Champagne.

Now, the French are big on "appellation d'origine contrôlée", that is, the origin of wines needs to be certified. Given the wide variety of wines, and the fact that some wine growing locations have a bigger reputation, one may want to pretend to be from a region. In your are not from the region, that is fraud that should be covered by usual commercial law (false advertising). Where it gets iffy is when the wine maker is located in the fringes of the region. Does he really belong? This is the core of the French regulation, trying to prevent the dilution of a name.

What the Champagne region (France) is enforcing is preventing the (non-sparkling) wine of Champagne (Switzerland) from diluting the reputation of the Champagne name. Demand for the sparkling Champagne is high, so this did not prevent the Champagne region from expanding its name definition, thus acting exactly against the principle of "appellation d'origine contrôlée" it says it is defending. Sad.

An interesting twist to this is that there is a bakery in the Swiss village selling sticks it calls "flûtes de Champagne", an obvious pun on the situation. They are wildly popular in Switzerland.

It seems to be current at the University of Florida for professors to sell at inflated prices lecture notes to their students through a publisher called Faulkner. Not surprisingly, enterprising students started selling their own notes, to the point that there are now several businesses competing with each other, and in particular with Faulkner. The latter is now suing one note-taker, on the basis that it copied some material. Apparently, this is not the first suit, and the previous ones were not successful.

This raises several questions. 1) Does intellectual property extend to the spoken word? No, because it is not a tangible medium of expression. With all the recording going on in my classes, I am surprised I am not yet on iTunes (the homonym is not me...), and I would not care. 2) Does intellectual property extend to a summary and interpretation of the original work? No again, or movie reviewers, readers' digests and reporters would be out of business. 3) Does intellectual property extend to those you teach? No again, they came to listen precisely to acquire that knowledge, you cannot and should refrain them from using it. 4) Aren't academics in it for the public good, the dissemination of knowledge? Precisely.

More background material on Open Access News.

Copyright lawyers! The controversial anti-Quran documentary of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders was published without amendments despite copious outrage in the Muslim world, but copyright lawyers make the impossible happen: images of the infamous Allah cartoon will have to be edited out.

This documentary raises all sorts of questions, but in the context of this blog, it raises a particular one. This is a documentary, would it not fall under fair use to show a cartoon directly linked to the topic at hand?

I just ran across the website of an old exhibition (which is still ready for new exhibits) that stretches then limits of copyrights and trademarks. illegal-art.org may not necessarily be pleasing to the eye, but it is full of courageous, and even brazen attempts to use or abuse copyrighted and trademarked material, with plenty of lawyer stories. Enjoy the three eared Mickey Mouse, the Iowa prof who trademarked "Freedom of Expression" and sent a cease-and-desist letter to himself, and much more.