Category: General

The 1709 Blog: Happy New Year and Welcome to the Public Domain

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| Copyright, General

Happy New Year and Welcome to the Public Domain

 

pride and prejudice 1Holidays, festivals and parties abound as the year turns from one to another.  As we recover from all the celebrating, let us not forget one of copyright’s biggest days buried in the midst of all the punch, eggnog and streamers: Public Domain Day.

As is usual for this most festive of IP days, many posts around the blogosphere are listing works that have entered the public domain, works that would have entered the public domain under previous copyright laws and parties and events celebrating it all.

 

Picture: A page from this blogger’s favorite public domain work

 

via the1709blog.blogspot.com

 

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The “Fallacy of Intellectual Property” Fallacy | Copyhype

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| Copyright, General

The “Fallacy of Intellectual Property” Fallacy

… Law professor Eric E. Johnson is currently writing a series of posts on “the great fallacy of intellectual property“. He describes this fallacy this way: “The long understood theory for why IP rights are necessary has been that people won’t invent useful technologies or create worthwhile art and literature without having the right to profit from their labors.”

We can call this the “fallacy of intellectual property” fallacy.

It’s a fallacy because it doesn’t accurately state the theory behind copyright. The economic justification for copyright is that it is an incentive to create — not a necessary condition. True, there exists a base level of drive to create knowledge and culture. But, as knowledge and culture are fundamentally important to a democratic society, an incentive to create above and beyond this base level provides significant benefits to that society.

In addition, the “fallacy of intellectual property” fallacy fails to account for an arguably more important function of copyright. Copyright provides an incentive to invest in creation.

via copyhype.com

This is an extract from a long, fascinating and subtle discussion by Terry Hart of a very important issue.

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Balkinization >> Why the U.S. Shouldn’t Prosecute Assange

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| 1A, Freedom of Expression, General

Why the U.S. Shouldn’t Prosecute Assange–For the U.S.’s Sake, Not His

 

Marvin Ammori

 

… Many of our nation’s landmark free speech decisions are not about heroes–several are about flag-burners, racists, Klansmen, and those with political views outside the mainstream. And yet we measure our commitment to freedom of speech, in part, by our willingness to protect even their rights despite disagreement with what they say, and why they say it.

… I end up, with Assange, where I do with racists and Klansmen. Despite the damage he has caused, the costs to our nation of prosecuting his speech outweigh the benefits. I hope our nation’s lawyers consider the merits of this position in determining how best to respond to Assange and Cablegate.

via balkin.blogspot.com

This is an extract from a very long post which is well worth reading. It is a thorough, well-considered and compelling case. As with Marvin, I too end up with Assange where I do with racists and Klansmen: we can’t choose who should benefit from rights – they ought to be available to everyone, racists and Julian Assange as well as the people we like.

See also Wikileaks: International Free Speech Reps Urge Restraint (First Amendment Law Prof Blog) and WikiLeaks and our obligations to the web of tellings: the principles of free speech, discretion and bearing witness come into conflict when considering a case such as WikiLeaks by Nicholas Shackel in the Guardian.

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Concurring Opinions » Privacy vs. Security vs. Anonymity

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| General, Privacy

Privacy vs. Security vs. Anonymity

posted by Sasha Romanosky

When I first began my PhD, I was keen to properly sort and define any new terms and reconcile them with my own education and experience. Three terms that always seemed to be intermingled were: Privacy, Security and Anonymity. Certainly they are related, but I wanted to be a little more specific and understand exactly when and how they overlapped.

First, let’s establish some basic definitions. For the purpose of this blog post, the following definitions will suffice (I’ll address alternative definitions later):
• Privacy: having control over one’s personal information or actions
• Security: freedom from risk or danger
• Anonymous: being unidentifiable in one’s actions

via concurringopinions.com
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Hello, world

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| General

Note: this was my first post on Posterous, which is now long gone. I ported my Posterous posts into this blog. This is my ‘Hello World’ post for this blog.

In the time-honoured tradition, my first post here is under the venerable title above: Hello, world.

I’ve started this site as a companion to my blog at Cearta and my twitter at feed @cearta. As the ‘about’ panel says: anything that catches my eye on the wild wild web that’s too long for twitter but too short for cearta will (probably – eventually) end up here. I’ll tweet links to most of the posts here, and may even bring a few together under the Gallimaufry category on Cearta.

It’s an experiment in which I hope you will join me. With apologies to Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve:

Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

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Courtroom broadcasting

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| General

Adam Wagner on UK Human Rights Blog takes up the perennial question of whether courtroom proceedings should be broadcast. Some extracts from his blogpost:

Should justice be televised?


The head of Sky News has argued in a new Guardian article that justice must be televised as allowing TV cameras in court would help restore public faith in criminal proceedings. …

The usual arguments in support are:

  1. Television opens the court to public scrutiny
  2. Televised hearings can educate the public about what happens in the justice system
  3. Cameras have no negative impact on trials, according to U.S. research
  4. The public have a right to see justice done, and the only proper way this can be accomplished is to allow them access to hearings through their TV sets

And the arguments against:

  1. Televised justice leads to soundbites and sensationalism, and edited highlights of a case lose the subtlety of legal argument
  2. Television fosters disrespect for the court
  3. Cameras pervert the trial process as juries become star struck and lawyers grandstand
  4. Victims and witnesses are intimidated an can be less safe as a result. …

    5. The Lawtube age
    The debate over cameras in court is as old as camera technology itself, but in the age of YouTube, 24-hour news and the iPlayer, it should be reopened.

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