There is an article over on Ars Technica about emusic. After Apple they are the biggest vendor of online music. The interesting feature is that they sell MP3 tracks without DRM - which has the advantage that their music runs on anything, the iPod, for example.

The majors are terrified of piracy and so insist on strict DRM controls to safeguard their music. The indie labels that eMusic works with generally don't have that fear. "The indies have always viewed the world differently," says Pakman [the CEO of emusic]. "You know, the indies struggle for attention, for customers, so the notion of someone actually digging a track and e-mailing it to 10 of their best friends doing self-promotion that's music to the ears of the indie record labels. Whereas an RIAA member says, 'We've got to sue that guy.'"

In other words: the marginal musicians - the ones who might stop producing music if they made less money - aren't getting much benefit of copyright. It is the star musicians - the ones who would keep right on making music for a fraction of what they are paid now - who benefit from copyright. But the purpose of copyright is not to enrich the star musician at the expense of everyone else.

Who would have thought there was a website called "Plagiarism Today"? Or that they wouldn't have a clue about what plagiarism is? As you might have thought, Merriam-Webster defines plagiarize as

transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source

intransitive senses : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

The point being of course that plagiarism is about attribution. But not according to "Plagiarism Today." They believe that blogs are the new plagiarists because they

are marked with large swaths of block quotes and heavy content reuse, but also proper attribution and at least some original content.

The post then goes on to talk about fair use, as if that had some connection to plagiarism. Is it too much to ask that a website specializing in plagiarism know the difference between plagiarism and copyright violation? (HT: Slashdot)

Addendum: Jonathan Bailey, the author of the post in question, replies to my post in the comment section. As he says, the plagiarism wording was taken from several articles on the subject. The thrust of his article was really about copyright and fair use, not about plagiarism - and he doesn't talk about plagiarism in his own comments, just uses it as a hook. So in fairness to him I'll direct the comments above at the articles he links to and not at his post.

Commenting on his post: I think aggregating other people's work with attribution is a good thing. In the case of this blog, if you read the copyright stuff on the right, you have the legal right to quote as much of this stuff as you want, and I think that the general view among bloggers is that being quoted a lot is good publicity. On the creativity side, organizing things is often as valuable as creating the components that are being organized. I would love to live in a world without copyright where we would all quote each other and build on each others work without involving lawyers.

In an an earlier post I talked about the Microsoft campaign against thought thieves. I finally found out what they must be talking about. They must be channelling Harlan Rook

All those films he made. Those are my nightmares, not his! Every night I dream, and somehow he reads my mind. He stole my thoughts. He put my thoughts on film, and he takes all the credit. He can't get away with it. He has to pay.

Daniel Wallace has challenged the GPL license widely used for open source software. He argues that it violates the anti-trust laws by making entry into the software industry difficult because it keeps price low. Groklaw has a nice article on the dismissal of his first lawsuit. Enterprise Open Source Magazine (HT: Slashdot) is reporting the dismissal of his second lawsuit. Yet another victory for sanity in the judiciary: both judges pointed out that that it isn't anti-competitive to sell good products at low prices, however difficult it makes it for people like Daniel Wallace to enter the industry selling lousy products at high prices.

It will probably seem like I am picking on Tim Lee, but I think he is articulate and sensible. I also think that Mike Masnick is articulate and sensible, but then again, he is agreeing with me. Tim argues about my post concerning movie costs

This is a good argument, but I still don't entirely buy it. Certainly, this gives us a reason to think the optimal price for movies in the future will not be $200 million, as better technology allows us to cut the costs of the expensive special effects and film-based recording technologies that contribute to the cost of Hollywood movies. Certainly, that will bring down the cost of blockbuster movies somewhat.

...

I have the impression (please correct me if I'm wrong) that much of the cost is driven by the immense amount of labor required to create a top-quality film. You've got lighting crews, camera crews, makeup crews, set crews, sound crews, post-production crews, and on and on. Another major cost is the environment in which actors act. Either you have to move your cast and crew to a new location, which involves a lot of travel costs, or you have to construct sets, which requires considerable materials and labor for their construction.

Star Wreck had all of this. I think at this point a picture and quote should do the trick. This is the bridge of the starship in Star Wreck

In the earlier post I talked about the render farm because I thought the picture of the kitchen was a pretty low cost example of a render farm. But if you see the movie - you will realize that they have elaborate sets, ranging from the bridge of several starships - much more elaborate and larger than in the Star Trek or Star Wars movies - as for example, the set above - to battles in the snow or inside a nuclear center. How did they do this? The quote is worth repeating

A: What sets? The bridge sets are all virtual. The on-location shoots were made at locations that didn't cost any money (schools, public places etc). The "bluescreen studio" is actually a small piece of blue linoleum in Samuli's living room...

The cost in other words was essentially nothing. See the movie then read how they did it - it changed my mind about the costs of making a movie, I suspect it will change yours. BTW - I don't know what they did for a sound crew, but the sound quality sounds to me to be quite good.

A lone blogger Peter [last name unknown to me] has taken on the Amazon one-click patent. It is expensive to file patent appeals - he raised the money by asking people to vote against the patent with their dollars. He successfully raised the filing fee and has filed the appeal. He identified significant prior art that should - in a just world - invalidate the patent. His beta test of a market based procedure for getting rid of ridiculous patents continues. Let us wish him luck and give him our support.

Several IP news items today. First it is being widely reported that the Supreme Court is cracking down on patent trolls - requiring the Circuit Court not to issue an injunction without considering what the potential damages might be. This may make it harder for a company without a patent to threaten to close down a business by getting an injunction - we will see. However, they may claim huge damages on account of not being able to enter the market, so it probably won't make much difference.

In the other direction Slashdot is also reporting that Creative is suing Apple over the iPod interface. Couldn't happen to nicer guys: Apple having done their best to patent the interface as well. It is probably a good reason to sell stock in both firms.

The New York Times reports that Major League Baseball claims to own the commercial use of baseball statistics. If MLB prevails, unlicensed commercial fantasy-baseball operations would have to cease operation. Says the Times:

The dispute is between a company in St. Louis that operates fantasy sports leagues over the Internet and the Internet arm of Major League Baseball, which says that anyone using players' names and performance statistics to operate a fantasy league commercially must purchase a license. The St. Louis company counters that it does not need a license because the players are public figures whose statistics are in the public domain.... The case is scheduled for jury trial in United States District Court in St. Louis beginning Sept. 5. CBC and Major League Baseball Advanced Media filed motions for summary judgment that the court could rule on in July.

MLB already licenses operations that use player photos and team logos. But according to the Times:

Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which runs its own array of fantasy games on the league's portal, MLB.com, has decreased its number of licensees from dozens in 2004 to 19 last season to 7 this year, focusing on large multimedia outlets like CBS SportsLine and cutting out many of the four-figure licenses that had covered smaller operators' use of only names and statistics. CBC, which had a license from 1995 to 2004, filed suit to confirm that it has the right to use those limited materials freely.

Interestingly, baseball once took a different position:

When several major leaguers from the 1940's and 50's sued Major League Baseball over use of their names and statistics in materials like promotional videos and game programs, baseball argued that such use was protected by the First Amendment.

Is any comment necessary?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Kevin Kelly has a long New York Times article about digitizing books, Google's solution to the orphan works problem, and the clash of the copyright monopoly business model versus the disruptive competitive digital technology model.
Kelly points out that the five publishers that sued Google last year are partners in the Google Book Search Partner Program. They want readers to be able to search books because it's good for their business. But like any monopolist, they don't want to give up their rents.

In an earlier post I said

While the home video is scarcely a good substitute for a $200 million movie production, the quality gap has narrowed enormously in the last 20 years, and it isn't unreasonable to think that in another 20 years, home production of "professional" quality movies will become cheap and practical.

I was off by 20 years. Take a look at the movie "Star Wreck", available as a free download. To my inexpert eye the production qualities are the same as a $200 million movie production. Since they thank six sponsors, one for "lend[ing] us a Pinnacle DV500 edting [sic] card" that retails for about $800, I think we can safely assume they didn't spend $200 million making the movie. According to their FAQ

Q: Damn, you must be very rich when you can afford a film like this...Huge sets, studios, actors and render farms!
A: What sets? The bridge sets are all virtual. The on-location shoots were made at locations that didn't cost any money (schools, public places etc). The "bluescreen studio" is actually a small piece of blue linoleum in Samuli's living room...
For Samuli this is a somewhat costly hobby, but as a movie it's still very close to a zero budget. The most expensive part of the production has been keeping the computer equipment up to date.

This is what their render farm looks like: