January 1 is Public Domain Day–the day when new works around the world come into the public domain. Some countries, the term of copyright is life of the author + seventy years, and in others it remains life of the author + fifty (in a very simplified version — the students working on the Durationator software can attest to how complicated the term of a copyright can really be–we at Tulane Law School are working on a web-based tool that will help users determine the copyright status of a given work (book, photo, film, etc.) for use in the U.S. and abroad (in sixty countries) — we are hoping to have a Beta version complete and available by the end of January.)

Today, I post about the new additions to the public domain.
Most exciting in the U.S. are unpublished works, which are also on a life of the author + 70 years system—with the caveat that if the works were created before 1978 but published or the first time between 1978 and 2002, the work gets additional protection through December 31, 2047. This applies to unpublished works throughout the world—regardless of the nationality of the author—when the work is used in the U.S.

The British Telegraph is reporting that in the UK, Popeye the Sailor is in the public domain because its creator, Elzie Segar, died at age 43 in 1938 (but not the trademark). See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4017251/Popeyes-copyright-to-expire-i…. The works are now in the public domain in any life of the author plus seventy country but not in the U.S. Any unpublished works by Segar, however, are no win the public domain, as long as they were not first published between 1978 and 2002.

THE LISTS

The death list for 1938 at Wikipedia is a useful place to begin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938#Deaths. Here is the wikipedia list, which also includes birth dates.
January 8 - Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist and children’s book author (Raggedy Ann) (b. 1880)
January 20 - Émile Cohl, French caricaturist and animator (b. 1857)
January 21 - Georges Méliès, French film director (A Trip To The Moon) (b. 1861)
January 28 - Bernd Rosemeyer, German racing driver (b. 1909)
February 2 - Frederick William Vanderbilt, American railway magnate (b. 1856)
February 7 - Harvey Firestone, American tire manufacturer (b. 1868)
February 18 - David King Udall, American politician (b. 1851)
February 19 - Edmund Landau, German mathematician (b. 1877)
March 1 - Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italian writer, war hero, and politician (b. 1863)
March 2 - Ben Harney, American composer and pianist (b. 1871)
March 13 - Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Soviet politician (b. 1888)
March 13 - Clarence Darrow, American attorney (b. 1857)
April 8 - Joe “King” Oliver, African-American jazz musician (b. 1885)
April 12 - Feodor Chaliapin, Russian bass (b. 1873)
April 16 - Steve Bloomer, English footballer (b. 1874)
April 21 - Allama Iqbal, Indian philosopher and poet (b. 1877)
April 25 - Aleksander Świętochowski, Polish writer (b. 1849)
April 26 - Edmund Husserl, Austrian philosopher (b. 1859)
May 4 - Carl von Ossietzky, German pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1889)
May 9 - Thomas B. Thrige, Danish industrialist (b. 1866)
May 13 - Charles Edouard Guillaume, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1861)
May 26 - John Jacob Abel, American pharmacologist (b. 1857)
July 4 - Otto Bauer, Austrian Social Democratic politician (b. 1881)
August 1 - Edmund Charles Tarbell, American artist (b. 1862)
August 7 - Constantin Stanislavski, Russian theatre practitioner (b. 1863)
August 14 - Hugh Trumble, Australian test cricketer (b. 1876)
August 16 - Robert Johnson, African-American blues singer (b. 1911)
September 1 - Nikolai Bryukhanov, Soviet statesman and political figure who served as People’s Commissar of Finances (b. 1878)
September 17 - Bruno Jasieński, Polish poet (b. 1901)
September 25 - Paul Olaf Bodding, Norwegian missionary to India and creator of the Santali latin alphabet (b. 1865)
October 2 - Alexandru Averescu, Romanian soldier and politician (b. 1859)
October 13 - E.C. Segar, American comics artist (Popeye)
October 17 - Karl Kautsky, Austrian Marxist theoretician (b. 1854)
October 22 - May Irwin, Canadian actress and singer (b. 1862)
October 24 - Ernst Barlach, German sculptor and poet (b. 1870)
October 27 - Lascelles Abercrombie, English poet and critic (b. 1881)
November 9 - Vasily Blyukher, Soviet military commander (b. 1889)
November 10 - Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey (b. 1881)
November 20 - Maud of Wales, queen of Haakon VII of Norway (b. 1869)
November 30 - Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Romanian fascist, leader of the Iron Guard (executed along other Guard activists) (b. 1899)
December 11 - Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1869)
December 20 - Annie Armstrong, American missionary leader (b. 1850)
December 25 - Karel Čapek, Czech author (R.U.R.) (b. 1890)
December 28 - Florence Lawrence, Canadian actress (b. 1886)

Note: Townsend Gard’s post, which excerpted above is under Creative Commons BY

“There are multiple reports springing up all over the internet of a mass suicide of Microsoft 30GB Zune players globally. Check Zune forums, Gizmodo, or other such sites; the reports are spreading rapidly, except apparently to the Microsoft official Zune site.”

At this point the cause of the failure is not clear, it is tough to find the issue and resolve it with a closed system. All users are at the mercy of Microsoft, if the platform was open source we could look at it and try to solve the problem. Why should computers with DRM be different from watches or cars that allow anyone to open them up and fix problems?

I think Copyfight puts it well with:

This should be a clarion warning that using proprietary hardware or software (DRM) to restrict peoples’ ability to manage their legally owned content is a bad plan. We are all at the mercy of whatever bugs and bad business plans lie behind these locks.

PS: From the Zune Release 2006 Don’t get ZUNED:

In honor of Freedom for IP’s partnership with Defective by Design to crash tomorrow’s Zune release party in Seattle, I’ve composed a little consumer warning to hand out to all the eager music fans who clearly haven’t been warned about getting zuned….

DON’T GET ZUNED

Remember the 8-track? Neither does anyone else under 30….

According to a report on Wired.com, the RIAA spokesman claims that the RIAA has not filed any new lawsuits “for months”; according to the Wall Street Journal report the RIAA stopped filing mass lawsuits “early this fall”; and the Associated Press was apparently told that the RIAA had stopped bringing new lawsuits in August.

Being very familiar with the RIAA’s penchant for “misspeaking”, even when under oath, I investigated the matter a bit, and learned that a large number of suits have been brought by the RIAA quite recently, one as recently as this Monday. Here are just a few. Those marked green were contributed by some of our great readers:

Atlantic Recording v. Williams 08cv01710 W.D. Pennsylvania 12/15/08
Sony BMG Music v. Linus 08cv14413 S.D. Florida 12/11/08
UMG Recordings v. Gulledge 08-cv-00973-MHT-TFM M.D. Alabama 12/10/08
Warner Bros. Records Kelley 08-cv-02295-CLS N.D. Alabama 12/10/08
Sony BMG Music v. Van Ornum 08-cv-04205-JLH E.D. Arkansas 12/10/08
Interscope Records v. Tabor 08-cv-03068-JLH W.D. Arkansas 12/10/08
BMG Music v. O’Brien 08-cv-02244-HRH D. Arizona 12/10/08
Priority Records v. Easterling 08-cv-08131-PA-JTL C.D. California 12/10/08
UMG Recordings v. Ibarzabal 08-cv-08136-R-SH C.D. California 12/10/08
Interscope Records v. Doe 4 08-cv-01880-JBA D. Connecticut 12/10/08
Arista Records v. Doe 2 08-cv-01874-CFD D. Connecticut 12/10/08
Arista Records v. Doe 3 08-cv-01876-SRU D. Connecticut 12/10/08
UMG Recordings v. Burmeister 08-cv-02295-MPM-DGB C.D. Illinois 12/10/08

If the RIAA wants credibility they need to have their legal department talk to their media department and stop filling suits yesterday and find an amiable way to solve the outstanding suits in progress.

PS: Jonathan Zittrain did a great job as the moderator.

After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take.

Now they just need to put start putting resources into find new business models and we can work together.

Jonathan Rees - Science Commons - Photo by Oneras under CC BY SA

Jonathan Rees gave six layers of what comprises an interface:

• permission
• access
• container syntax
• vocabulary
• semantics

The focus of the project is on data integration and reducing transactions costs by developing and testing the whole interface stack for scientific data, the data integration problem becomes vastly easier to understand, browse, search, consult, transform, analyze, visualize, model, annotate, and organize data.  Jonathan closed with a call to action is to “choose, promote, and nourish sharing solutions at every level in the stack.”

Read more about open data at Science Commons

Oshani Seneviratne - MIT Student by Oneras under CC BY SA

Oshani’s presentation  focused on “Detecting Creative Commons Attribution License Violations with Flickr Images on the World Wide Web.” CC licenses do not come with any easy way to find violations of a license. Her project demonstrates a way to search for violations of flickr images by finding deep links and then checking to see if the use meets the conditions for attribution and then generating a report. This is a real first step to creating assurance that licenses are being followed or at least a way for authors to monitor their works spread online.

Future directions for this technology include:

• adding other licenses
• looking for non-commercial use violations
• checking for the Share-Alike condition
• moving from deep links to hashes or other fingerprinting of content

Lawrence Lessig has been appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law School, and as the faculty director of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. The announcement was made jointly today (Dec. 12) by Harvard University Provost Steven E. Hyman and Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan.

“Harvard is fortunate to have such an outstanding scholar at the helm of one of its finest organizations,” said Hyman of the Center appointment. “Lawrence brings with him tremendous vision and administrative experience, which will serve the center well as he continues to build upon its remarkable success.”

As faculty director of the Center, Lessig will expand on the center’s work to encourage teaching and research about ethical issues in public and professional life. He will also launch a major five-year project examining what happens when public institutions depend on money from sources that may be affected by the work of those institutions — for example, medical research programs that receive funding from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs they review, or academics whose policy analyses are underwritten by special interest groups.

“I am very excited to be returning to Harvard to work on a project of enormous importance to our democracy,” said Lessig. “The chance to extend the work of the Center to focus on the problems of institutional independence is timely and essential. I am eager to work with friends and old colleagues from the Law School and across the University to make this project a success.”

Lessig will join the Law School faculty and take up his duties as director of the Center in the summer of 2009.

Photo by Robert Scoble Under CC-BY License

David Torpie (Office of Economic and Statistical Research at the Queensland Treasury) - Photo by Oneras under CC BY SA

David’s talk focused on the “Government Information Licensing Framework: a multidisciplinary project improving access to Public Sector Information.” In  Australia government works are copyrighted by default and copyright applies to many more works then it is in the US.  Sweat of the brow works like a phone book or a data base with no creativity are copyrighted.  The GILF project gives greater access to Australian government data, to make government more transparent.  The Queensland Treasury uses “digital license management”, or DLM. DLM is a technology to embed license metadata into documents and other works, developed in Java. Benefits include ease of linking from data to license, and finding information based on its license. DLM should not be confused with DRM Digital Rights Management which locks works down with technological barriers.

For real time photos of th Tech Summit check out Oneras‘ photo stream on Flickr.