Media
Media
Establishing Best Practices Guidelines for Fair Use of Copyrighted Material on Blogs
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/19/2008 - 15:37The recent DMCA takedown request by the Associated Press and the related issues that have sprung up are being hotly debated in across the blogosphere, but what is mostly being lost in the debate is who should establish best practices guidelines for the Fair Use of Copyrighted Material on Blogs, and how the DMCA should be used in this debate.
Background
For those who haven’t been following, recently the Associated Press filed seven DMCA Takedowns against the Drudge Retort. The posts contained short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words. In addition, Drudge Retort a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx where users contribute blog entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web. One would think that an organization like the Associated Press would like people to link to their articles as being interesting.
My understanding is that Rogers Cadenhead of The Retort contacted Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen about the best response, and Liza suggested that Rogers should contact the Media Bloggers Association, which has done great work defending bloggers in legal issues. In addition, the MBA has a long-standing relationship with the AP which might be useful in addressing the legal issues around the specific DMCA Takedown request.
Around the same time, Jeff Jarvis posted FU AP. A few days later, the New York Times ran this article. According to Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of the AP “the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association” and he hoped “that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.”
Kos hops in with this blog post about the fiasco by talking about dumbasses at the Media Bloggers Association and stating that The AP doesn't get to negotiate copyright law.
Cory Doctorow joins in by asking Who are the "Media Bloggers Association" and what gives them to right to negotiate copyright with the Associated Press?.
What both Kos and Cory miss are that the MBA is not negotiating copyright with the AP. Instead, the MBA is representing a blogger in a particular legal battle. Robert Cox, current head of the MBA posts his version of the back story on the Media Bloggers Association website.
Mary Hodder explains to Cory Doctorow a little bit about who the Media Bloggers Association is. Founding members included Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen, Rebecca MacKinnon and Micah Sifry.
Where do we go from here?
All of this seems to stem from a few key issues. First, how do we understand ‘Fair Use’? The Center for Social Media at American University’s School of Communications created a Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use.
Who is going to create such a statement for bloggers, citizen journalists and other users of online digital media? Perhaps the Associated Press, the Media Bloggers Association, Cory Doctorow, Kos, and members of many other organizations should work together to establish a statement of best practices that all the parties involved could come to basic agreement on.
Of course, this does not mean that there won’t be future conflicts. What is also needed is a way to address these conflicts in a more productive manner than filing DMCA takedown notices. There are lots of complaints about the DMCA, most notably the lack of due process in takedown notices. Many people are calling for revisions or repeal of the DMCA. Whatever happens, we would all be better off if organizations like the Associated Press and those that they are going after had better mechanisms resolving issues about what constitutes Fair Use for those areas not covered by a statement of best practices or where there is some disagreement about the best practices.
So, who is interested in working on addressing the bigger issues?
Heavy Hands and The Angry Villager Rule
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/19/2008 - 08:32Recently there have been a lot of stories about people or organizations reacting heavy-handedly to events online, where people have organized and pushed back. It seems common enough that a look at the underlying dynamics needs to be looked at.
The hottest right now is probably the DMCA takedown requests that the Associated Press has issued against Drudge Retort. A lot has been written about this already, and a lot more needs to be written and will be written. For those who have not followed this, I would encourage you to check out the UnAssociated Press website. As you might guess from the title, they have a particular slant, going so far as to call for a blogger boycott of the AP. Culture Kitchen is another site which is providing important coverage and attempting to keep focus on the larger issues.
A second organization that seems to be constantly stumbling over its heavy-handedness is Linden Lab. Whether you look at the recent flap over whether adults who wish their avatars to appear in the shape of children would be allowed to participate in birthday celebrations for Second Life, or there repeated struggles with trademark and currency issues, Linden Lab consistently appears to act heavy-handedly, most likely at the advice of their lawyers, and then find themselves in the middle of a major brouhaha with the residents of Second Life.
Then, of course, there is the administration of Lewis Mills High School, which reacted in a heavy-handed manner when a student wrote criticisms of the administration at home one evening. This case is continuing in the Federal Courts, and one member of the administration has already received disciplinary action related to the case, and the lawyer for the administration has received a major warning from the chairman of Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission.
Now, let us look for a moment at ‘The Angry Villager Rule’. This was a rule from the game Dungeons and Dragons in the early days, probably over thirty years ago. Essentially, the person running the game could invoke The Angry Villager Rule, where the villagers would gather together and defeat even a very strong player in the game, in a manner similar to how army ants by their sheer force of numbers, could defeat much larger prey.
I’ve always thought of the Angry Villager Rule in terms of the Mandate of Heaven, a Chinese view that a King’s ruled by the blessing of Heaven. This blessing was seen by good weather, good crops and content citizens. Floods and famines were a sign that the mandate had been repealed. The citizens, suffering from floods and famines always seemed to me to be like the angry villagers seeking a new leader.
Perhaps a more current version of the Angry Villager rule is Clay Shirky’s book “Here Comes Everybody”. Internet based tools are enabling angry villagers to organize in response to heavy-handed actions of regimes that are losing their power because of these new enabling tools. Perhaps the folks at the Associated Press, Linden Lab, and Lewis Mills High School should be given a copy of Shirky’s new book.
So, we have a dynamic of people used to using the Internet for more and more of their social interaction, including organizing when the existing institutions don’t understand and attempt to thwart online communities. It is a compelling narrative. However, the means of mediating this dynamic seems to be slow in appearing.
The Associated Press, after a backlash against their heavy-handed DMCA takedown orders, is now talking about engaging bloggers in a discussion about what constitutes ‘fair use’ in a digital age, and even these efforts are receiving criticism from the angry global villagers. They would have been wiser to start this discussion long before issuing any takedown orders.
Even with these feeble efforts, it seems that the Associated Press is making more progress in understanding the new millennium than Linden Lab or the administration at Lewis Mills High School have been.
So, how do we establish a meaningful dialog about how the Internet is changing our social structures? How do we find a space that helps older institutions evolve at the same time as not surrendering some of the boon that the Internet has provided?
Grumpy Tuesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/17/2008 - 09:51I continue to fight a cold and have not been able to get enough sleep recently, so I’m pretty grumpy. On top of this, there is a long list of tasks that keep getting put off, causing the list to get longer, including several blog posts I need to write. So, I will combine a few of them into this post, and then, when and if time permits, expand upon them.
Firefox 3
Today is Firefox 3 day. Starting at 1 PM EDT, people will be able to download the official version of Firefox 3. I downloaded the final release candidate and have run it a little bit. So far, there isn’t much that I’ve seen as improvements. The one feature that I like best is a ‘most viewed’ tab. Things I don’t like: You need to be running at least Windows 2000. It won’t run on my main machine which is still Windows NT. Yeah, I know, I should upgrade, but Windows NT has been good enough for me for years.
Things I’m trying to get used to: With Firefox 2, you have these little arrows next to your back and forward buttons so you can skip back, or forward, several pages. In Firefox 3, they’ve combined this into one button. There is a little circle next to the page showing where you are. A little more compressed; mixed feelings about it. Likewise, the dropdown list of recently visited sites is now split onto two lines; the title on the top and the link below it. I’m still used to the old way of displaying the list with the URL on the left and the title on the right. I prefer the older format. Perhaps there is a way of tweaking Firefox 3 to look more like Firefox 2.
Associated Press
Recently, the Associated Press sent takedown orders to a blog for quoting brief passages of AP articles. They requested the removal of six blog posts and one comment for quoting passages from AP stories ranging from 33 to 79 words. At the core of this is a battle over what constitutes Fair Use. The AP positions borders on asserting that no use of AP content is fair. First off, this is really stupid on the APs part. They should be encouraging people to link to their content. Instead, they have discouraged people from linking to their content. The UnAssociated Press is calling for a boycott of all AP stories. People are urging others to stop Digging article from the Associated Press and any other activities that might drive traffic to AP stories. Major hat tip to Liza Sabater for her coverage of this at Culture Kitchen. For more information on this, start off with Netroots' bloggers boycott of Associated Press is working.
EntreCard
In a similarly stupid move, EntreCard is asking bloggers to write for them, offering between 700 and 2000 EntreCard credits for reviews of other blogs. Depending on how much they actually pay, and the exchange rate of EntreCard credits, that works out to be between around $2.50 to $15 per blog post. For bloggers that do most of their writing for free, that is a major improvement, and is near the low end of the range that people get paid for writing articles about Second Life. Yet EntreCard, unlike other sites, will not permit republishing of the article on the writers own blog. They express concern about Google not liking duplicate content.
My understanding is that Google doesn’t like the same content with hundreds of links repeated over hundreds of websites in an effort to boost page rank, and that an article reposted on another site or two isn’t what Google is penalizing. If people can come up with details about Google penalizing a site for regular cross posting, please let me know.
Second Life
As a segue from grumpy to hopeful, let me comment on the Second Life birthday celebration. It starts June 23rd. There was a lot of stuff floating around about how the birthday celebration would not allow adults whose avatars are in the shape of children from participating. Linden Lab changed its position and Dusan Writer wrote a post entitled Linden Regroups and the Kids Are In. I had really wanted to write a detailed post about this, but time has slipped away. Perhaps I can write a post about the celebration.
More Second Life
The Network Culture Project at USC’s Annenberg School for Communications has a different approach to promoting community involvement in Second Life. They are having a Community Challenge contest. They have announced five finalists, with voting through the 30th. My first choice is clearly The Ability Commons. I am good friends with the folks behind The Ability Commons and hold their work in the highest regard. I haven’t voted yet, because I need to look more closely at the other finalists to determine my second and third choices. If you are in Second Life, please check out this project and the five finalists and then enter your vote.
Serena
As a final more hopeful post, I want to highligh Help Save Serena. I mentioned the effort in passing in my wandering around EntreCard sites on Bloomsday, but I didn’t have the link to the Help Save Serena blog.
There are plenty of other things that I need to write about, but I have too many other non-writing tasks to accomplish, so this will have to suffice for right now.
Teach your children well
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 09:40“I hate you,” she shouted as she stormed out of the room and slammed the door. Shaken and hurt, I sat quietly. I will give her some time to calm down, and then go to her, let her know that I love her, even if I do things that I think are the best for her and she disagrees, even if she behaves in an inappropriate way. I can help her with that another time.
Does this sound familiar? I suspect that anyone with a teenager at home must have experienced something like this. The teenage years are difficult, not only because of the raging hormones, but also because of the need for teenagers to separate themselves from their parents and authority figures, to establish their own identity, authority, sense of self worth, and find ways to express it.
As much as I hate the phrase, “The Internet has changed everything”, there is a hint of truth about it for teenagers. At home, at night, they can shout and slam virtual doors online. They can call the administration of their school douchebags. They can create MySpace parody pages of their school administrators.
Of course, this presents another problem. These outbursts, which in previous years might have been confined to the family room, are now available for everyone to see, including the douchebags at the central office.
It is reasonable to believe that the school administrators may also be shaken and hurt by these outbursts. Since they are acting “In Loco Parentis” at the schools and since they should be much better trained in dealing with the traumas and dramas of teenagers, you would expect them to handle the situation even better than I have in my house.
Yet school administrators are also human. They err. They fail. Since their parental relationships are based upon a job, instead of deep familial love of the children, they may act in ways that are more focused on defending their reputations and their jobs than on being good educators.
It seems as if this provides a useful framework for understanding what went on with Avery Doninger and the school administration at Lewis Mills High School in Burlington, CT. Avery wrote a blog post at home one evening after a dispute with the school administration about a concert she was helping organize. She referred to the ‘douchebags’ at the central office. Some of the administrators’ feelings were hurt and they lashed back at Avery. The case is currently in the courts. Yet Avery’s case is not the only one of its kind.
From the Student Press Law Center, I’ve learned of the case of Justin Layshock. At his grandmother’s house one evening, Justin created a parody profile of his high school principal, Eric Trosch, intimating that the principal was a drunk and a drug user. Mr. Trosch responded in a manner more like Paula Schwartz and Karissa Niehoff from Lewis Mills High School and focused on his reputation rather than his responsibilities as an educator.
In a rather bizarre move, the school district blamed the ACLU for the “damaged reputation because of the publicity the lawsuit elicited”. So, yet again, we see a school administration more concerned about reputation than pedagogical interests.
In a preliminary ruling on the Layshock case, a judge wrote, “They [the school administration] may not like something students say on their home computers and post on the Internet, but it’s for the parents to decide what, if any, discipline is appropriate.”
Yet a bigger question remains for me. What happens when parents show their children love and stand up for the children when they express themselves poorly, but legally? What happens when children learn that what they say matters and that freedom of speech needs to be protected?
Avery will be spending a year working Americorps. In a subsequent article about Justin Layshock’s case, we learn that Justin spent last summer volunteering at an orphanage in Africa.
In can be very difficult for parents and educators to act in love and in the best educational interests of their children when the children criticize them. I must admit, I don’t always do it right myself. But, by managing ones hurt and focusing on helping the child become more effective in speaking up clearly and strongly, we will create a new generation of leaders, like Avery and Justin and our country, and our world will be better off for it.
(Categories: )
Twittering the Democratic Rules Committee
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/31/2008 - 10:38The predicted storm has not yet hit today in Woodbridge, CT, but we are hunkering down, and planning on following the Democratic National Rules Committee on social media. Friends are at the meeting and sending messages via Twitter. Others are using Qik to stream videos and uploading pictures to Flickr. It provides a great opportunity to talk a little bit about these new media and why I tend to think blogging may be passé.
Some of this grows out of a discussion on the Blogs United list about the Democratic National Convention credentialing process. Four years ago, I was a blogger at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. It was a frustrating time. There was this desire to live blog the event. “The crowd of delegates are really eating up Barack Obama’s keynote speech…” There was also a desire to write longer, thoughtful posts about what was going on, such as a recounting of a discussion of a veteran that had volunteered to help at the convention because of his deep respect for Sen. Kerry. These are different blogging experiences that perhaps call for different tools.
One of the tools that has emerged since the 2004 Democratic National Convention is the Microblogging rage. Twitter is the most popular, but people also use Pownce, Jaiku, BrightKite and plenty of other services.
Before I go much further with that, I should mention another trend that has emerged since 2004 which is closely linked with Microblogging, and that is life streams, or friend feeds; I’m not sure a standard term for this has emerged. A lot of different sites provide aggregated life streams and some people use feeds to make their microblogs a life stream. So, the lines get blurry.
There are two different aspects of life streams or friend feeds. First, many of us are on many different services. As well as our blogs and microblogs, we are using Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, ma.gnolia, ClipMarks, LastFM, Yelp, and many other services. Numerous tools are emerging to aggregate information from all of these services. The two most popular right now seem to be FriendFeed and LifeStream, however other sites also provide this service as part of their greater offerings and I like to use MyBlogLog for this.
The second aspect of life streams and friend feeds is that we like to see not only the aggregation of all of the stuff we’ve been doing on various services, but we also like to see the feeds of all of our friends intermingled with what we are doing. Most of the services provide this as an option, often as the default.
So, with that, if you want to get your message out, you need to start playing with Microblogs and life streams. Ideally, use something like TwitterFeed to get pointers to your blog posts showing up in Twitter. You need to get all your feeds aggregated in sites like FriendFeed, LifeStream and MyBlogLog. Ideally, the DNCC will use some of these tools as well.
So, what is going on with the Democratic Rules Committee meeting? Andy Carvin did some live streaming of the protest outside using QIK. I sure hope that there are plenty of social media people at the Democratic National Convention using QIK and ustream to send live videos from the convention. I thought it was great seeing Andy’s live, on the street interview with protestors. Andy also was sending messages back and forth with other friends there and posting links to pictures from the protest.
Several other friends are there, and I suspect there are others there that I would like to follow that I haven’t seen. This gets to another site related to Twitter that I really like, Hashtags. If you follow Hashtags on Twitter, their program will follow you and will index any post that begins with a hash mark (#). So, when I was at Computers, Freedom and Privacy, 2008, I posted twitters with #cfp08. I used #cfp08 in the title of my blog posts so they would get picked up by hashtags as well. You can see the messages about #cfp08 here. Unfortunately, this isn’t widely used yet, but it should be. However, it would be great to see messages about the rules committee at something like #dncrules and convention messages posted at #dncc2008
Yeah, there are plenty of new ways of getting the message out. Microblogging, like Twitter and friend feeds are an important new way of getting the message out. I hope people reading this think about how Twitter can work with their blogging and that the DNCC finds ways of dealing with Twitter, FriendFeed, Qik, and other new ways of getting the message out.
