Via: Monica Narula
in the Columbia Jornalism Review:
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Vaidhyanathan.asp
best
M
Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net
Via: "Prashant Iyengar"
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michelle Childs
Date: Sep 27, 2006 5:57 PM
Subject: [A2k] LimeWire slams RIAA members' 'illegal online cartel'
To: a2k@lists.essential.org
Cc: ecommerce@lists.essential.org, ip@tacd.org
A much more interesting line of defence is LimeWire's attack against the
music industry. It says the case is "part of a much larger conspiracy to
destroy all innovation that content owners cannot control and that
disrupts their historical business models". The RIAA and its members are
using the law for anti-competitive means, not to control piracy, LimeWire
charges
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/26/limewire_riaa_counterclaim/
Counterblast in counterclaim
By Drew Cullen in San Francisco
Published Tuesday 26th September 2006 22:23
LimeWire LLC has returned fire in its copyright dispute with Recording
Industry Ass. Of America (RIAA), accusing its members of operating an
illegal cartel to control the online distribution of music.
In a recent lawsuit, The RIAA attacked LimeWire and its top developers for
facilitating copyright theft, through its peer-to-peer (P2P) file swapping
service.
In today's countersuit, Limewire denies the charges, noting that it is
merely the developer of an open source software. Limewire notes that it
is a true P2P service - there are no central servers to facilitate file
exchange. As such, people who download LimeWire swap files entirely of
their "own volition", it claims. Hmm. We can't see a US court buying this
argument.
A much more interesting line of defence is LimeWire's attack against the
music industry. It says the case is "part of a much larger conspiracy to
destroy all innovation that content owners cannot control and that
disrupts their historical business models". The RIAA and its members are
using the law for anti-competitive means, not to control piracy, LimeWire
charges.
Online music distribution, is it notes, a disruptive business model for
the music majors, which are "using the exclusivity rights inherent in
their copyrights - that they deployed with a vengeance, by unlawfully
extending and pooling those] to cartelize the network for the online
distribution of music... They also pooled their huge monetary resources to
combat and eventually defeat many of their online competitors."
LimeWire's counter-claim is here. (r)
http://www.ilrweb.com/viewILRPDF.asp?filename=arista_limewire_060925answercounterclaim
- --
Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs
Consumer Project on Technology in London
24, Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX,UK.
Tel:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252.
Mob:+44(0)790 386 4642. Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607
http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA .Tel.:
+1.202.332.2670,Fax: +1.202.332.2673
Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva
1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Via: "Yogesh Girdhar"
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523
Microsoft Media Player shreds your rights
Comment No more backups, or Tivo
By Charlie Demerjian: Thursday 21 September 2006, 10:08
Click here to find out more!
THINK DRM WAS bad already? Think I was joking when I said the plan
was to start with barely tolerable incursions on your rights, then
turn the thumbscrews? Welcome to Windows Media Player 11, and the
rights get chipped away a lot more. Get used to the feeling, if you
buy DRM infected media, you will only have this happen with
increasing rapidity.
One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If
you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC
to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If
you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get
the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the
tools they give you. If you want to do it in other ways, you are
either a lawbreaker or following the advice of J Allard. Wait, same
thing.
So, in WiMP10, you just backed up your licenses, and stored them in a
safe place. Buying DRM infections gets you a bunch of bits and a
promise not to sue, but really nothing more. The content mafia will
do anything in its power, from buying government to rootkitting you
in order to protect those bits, and backing them up leaves a minor
loophole while affording the user a whole lot of protection.
Guess which one wins, minor loophole or major consumer rights? Yes,
WiMP11 will no longer allow you the privilege of backing up your
licenses, they are tied to a single device, and if you lose it, you
are really SOL. Remember that feeling I mentioned earlier? This is
nothing less than a civil rights coup, and most people are dumb
enough to let it happen.
Read the links, the entire page is scary as hell, but the licensing
part takes the cake. "Windows Media Player 11 does not permit you to
back up your media usage rights (previously known as licenses)", Wow,
new terminology, old idea, you are a wallet with legs waiting to be
raped. "The store might limit the number of times that you can
restore your rights or limit the number of computers on which can use
the songs or videos that you obtain from them. Some stores do not
permit you to restore media usage rights at all." Translation, not
our problem, and get bent, we got your cash.
But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your
rights away too. If the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on,
well, I can't top their 1984 wording. "If the file is a song you
ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you
might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You
will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how
to restore your rights a limited number of times." This says to me it
will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights
whether or not you ask it to. Can you think of a reason you would
need to connect to MS for permission to play the songs you ripped
from you own CDs? How long do you think it will be before a service
pack, masquerading as a 'critical security patch' takes away the
optional part of the 'copy protection'? Now do you understand why
they have been testing the waters on WiMP phoning home? Think their
firewall will stop it even if you ask?
Then when you go down on the page a bit, it goes on to show that it
guts Tivo capabilities. After three days, it kills your recordings
for you, how thoughtful of them. Going away for a week? Tough, your
rights are inconvenient to their profits, so they have to go.
"Recorded TV shows that are protected with media usage rights, such
as some TV content recorded on premium channels, will not play back
after 3 days when Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2 for Windows XP is
installed on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. No known
workaround to resolve this issue exists at this time." Workaround my
*ss, this is wholesale rights removal by design.
What WiMP11 represents is one of the biggest thefts of your rights
that I can think of. MS planned this, pushed the various pieces
slowly, and this is the first big hammer to drop. Your rights, the
promises they made, and anything else that gets in the way of the
content mafia making yet more money gets thrown out. Why? Greed. Your
rights? History. You were dumb enough to let it happen, don't say I
didn't warn you. µ
Via: "Prashant Iyengar"
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006091903150400.htm&date=2006/09/19/&prd=bl&
Mumbai,Sept. 18: The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has partnered
with IBM to power the national portal of India (India.gov.in) enabling
delivery of government services.
The portal, based on open standards and Service Oriented
Architecture, will provide a `single point entry' to government
information and services using products such as IBM WebSphere? Portal,
IBM Workplace content manager for Web publishing and personalisation.
The Web site, available in multiple languages, has information across
various services, like filing of tax returns, getting birth
certificates and applying for a PAN card. The portal is said to have
five layers of security and cannot be hacked easily.
"We have provided the software and technology that will help NIC,"
said Mr R. Dhamodaran, Vice-President, IBM Software group and
developer relations.
A team of content contributors, comprising senior government officers
and experts will contribute diverse and up-to-date information to the
portal. NIC and IBM will also ensure universal accessibility of the
portal for the physically challenged and those using handheld devices.
"We wanted to develop the portal from the point of view of citizens
rather than from the government's perspective. It also gives a
platform for participation in the process of governance," said Dr N.
Vijayaditya, Director-General, NIC.
Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu Business Line
Via: "sudhir krishnaswamy"
Dear all,
In the last last 2 years, little progress has been made on the draft of the Indian version of the Creative Commons License. Shishir Jha, from IIT Bombay, who is leading this project, had requested me to initiate this revision process and to start a wider discussion to finalise the draft. The first set of amendments to the Indian version of the Attribution-Non-Commercial- Sharealike License 2.5 have been made by Krithika, Jayna and myself. A copy of the draft of the License and the Explanation of Legal Changes is pasted below. I look forward to comments and suggestions from this group!
regards,
Sudhir
Creative Commons Legal Code
Draft for Discussion-India-See Notes and Comments at end of the Text
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
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License
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Compilation: "a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term Collective Work." Do we want to add this additional definition of Compilation?
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e. “Work” means the copyrightable work of authorship offered under the terms of this License. I think this would need a better definition.
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[English Explanation of Legal Changes]
Draft Ver.1 - For Discussion Only
Comments
1. Collective Work
The Indian Copyright Act, does not have a definition equivalent to collective works (for example anthologies etc.) as “work” entitled to copyright protection under the Act. The term was defined under Section 35(1) of the old Act of 1911 as follows: Collective work is (a) any encyclopaedia, dictionary, year book or similar work, (b) a newspaper, review, magazine, or similar periodical or any work written in distinct parts by different authors or in which works or parts of works of authors are incorporated.
While specific definitions including that of literary work Sec.2(O) includes compilations, there is no overall category of collective work.
We may therefore have to consider either adapting the definition of Collective Work as it exists in the CC license, or create a definition for the Indian license.
This is unnecessary. Contractually parties may agree arrange rights and liabilities they already have. The lack of statutory recognition of collective works does not mean that a copyright holder does not have any rights related to the inclusion of their work into a collective work as this is a subset of the right to copy/reproduce. So the definition may be left as it is.
One more aspect that we might want to think about is whether the term ‘compilation’ needs to be specifically included with the broader definition of ‘collective work’. This would include databases to also be specifically included in the CC License, as they would not always be deemed to be included otherwise.
2. “Adaptations” is not a category defined under the Indian Copyright Act but there exists a similar category of ‘adaptations’ (defined under section 2(a) of the Act). Sec. 14 of the Act also provides for rights that are granted to particular classes of works, and adaptation rights are included for literary, artistic, dramatic work and musical works.
The definitions of ‘Adaptations’ and ‘adaptations’ under ‘The Creative Commons License’ and Indian Copyright Act respectively are pretty similar, but the Indian Copyright Act is slightly narrower in scope since it defines what adaptation means in reference to each class of works. For example ‘adaptations’ is defined separately for each class of creative works such as literary, artistic, dramatic and musical work. But Sec. 14 for instance in relation to industrial works, do not provide any right beyond the right of reproduction, exhibition and communication. Whereas the definition of ‘Adaptations’ under ‘The Creative Commons License’ is defined in as:
“...translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted...”
We would need to discuss the implication of this absence of a specified right of adaptation being granted to cinematograph films.
As we are drafting a work-neutral license we can keep the wider CC definition of adaptation with the understanding that works to which the adaptation right does not statutorily attach (industrial works) the definition does not apply comprehensively.
3. Waiver
New changes introduced under ‘The Creative Commons License’ in terms of ‘License grant’ which now specifically waives the exclusive right of the author of the work or the ‘performing rights society’ on behalf of the author, to collect such royalties for the public performance or public digital performance (webcast).
Provisions dealing with the powers and functions of Copyright society (analogous to performing rights society) in India are Section 33 to 36A of the Copyright Act, which are quite standard across jurisdictions. The waiver of the right to collect royalty by author or via the Performance Rights Society can be easily adapted into the Indian Creative Commons License.
Section 34(b) of the Copyright Act gives to the author unconditional right to withdraw any such authorization to collect royalty on his behalf by the copyright society. Hence with regard to the Copyright Society, they don’t have any right under the act which is affected by the ‘waiver terms’ under the Creative Commons License.
Under Section 34(a) of the Act, Copyright Societies can merely have the exclusive authorization to administer any rights under the work and nothing provides the same with any power to an exercise of such rights. Under no provision of the Act the rights vested in the author of the work are ever transferred to the Copyright Society and the ‘waiver provision’ under the License merely change the nature of the authorization exercised by the Copyright Societies as in they can not collect any royalty on behalf of the author any more since the author has waived the right to collect the same by adopting the license for the work.
Why does the Indian version not contain a provision similar to Sections 4(e) and 4(f) of the UK version of the CC license which grant the licensor an exclusive right to collect whether individually or via a Performing Rights Society the royalties for public performance of the work? There is no need to deny the author this right when Section 8(4) of the Indian version clearly vests in the author to waive any of his rights in writing at any time, if he so wishes. Sections 33 to 36 of the Copyright Act which deal with rights of the Copyright Society also vest in the author express rights to decide what rights he wishes to vest in the Society. Another advantage of vesting this exclusive right in the author is that the author can always be in a position to resolve any conflict between the rights of the Copyright Society and the rights of the licensee under the CC license.
Via: Vivek Narayanan
Please note: the schedule for the ifellows programme has changed. This
year, although October 31 is still the deadline for applications, the
fellowship term will now run from March to the end of October 2007
(fellows are required to be in the country until then to complete the
term and attend the fellowship workshop at the beginning of November).
--Vivek.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS – SARAI-CSDS INDEPENDENT FELLOWSHIPS, 2007
Applications are invited for the upcoming cycle of Sarai-CSDS
Independent Research Fellowships.
The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Sarai is a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
(CSDS), Delhi. CSDS is one of India's best known research centres, with
traditions of dissent and a commitment to the work of the public
intellectual going back four decades. The Sarai Programme at CSDS was
initiated in 2000 as a platform for discursive and creative
collaboration between theorists, researchers and practitioners actively
engaged in reflecting on contemporary urban spaces in South Asia—their
politics, built form, ecology, culture and history—as well as on the
histories, practices and politics of information and communication
technologies, the public domain and media forms.
For more information, visit www.sarai.net
*The Purpose of the Independent Fellowship*
The Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowships allow the time for individuals
from diverse backgrounds to either begin or continue research into
specific aspects of media and urban culture and society, broadly and
creatively defined, and to also think carefully and rigorously about the
various public forms in which their research might be rendered. We are
also interested in using the materials generated through the research to
continue to build up our thematic archive of research on the city. Thus,
we see the fellowship as an important source for this archive. Finally,
an important purpose of the fellowship program is to spark, overlap and
allow access to newly emerging research networks across disciplines,
academic and non-academic institutions, organisations, practices,
geographical locations and professional backgrounds.
We are thus invested in the idea of what we call public and distributed
research, where new knowledge is created and shaped from a variety of
locations, and not just in a top-down fashion. Participants in the
fellowship programme are expected to have a very strong and independent
motivation towards the pursuit of their own specialised areas of
research, but also to respond to and critique the research of others in
the programme as intelligent non-specialists, and be open to suggestions
and comments from non-specialists.
Each year, a large number of the fellowships are awarded to projects
that deploy standard methodologies and forms from the humanities and
social sciences towards what we feel are justly deserving, new and
emergent areas of research. We would like to not lose sight of these
tried and tested methodologies in the humanities and social sciences,
and will place a special emphasis on them this year. However, a
significant number of fellowships are also awarded to projects that are
innovative both in terms of what they consider to be research, as well
as the variety of purposes and forms to which that research is applied.
As a result, we encourage the inclusion of individuals with little or no
previous formal research experience who want to pursue, more rigorously,
a passion for a tightly-focused, feasible, understudied research topic;
and equally, we encourage individuals with seasoned research experience
in a conventional context to experiment with forms that are relatively
new to them.
For detailed abstracts of successful proposals from previous years,
please visit www.sarai.net and click on the link for "Independent
Fellowships" on the left-hand sidebar.
*Conditions*
--For administrative purposes, applicants are required to be resident in
India, and to have an account in any bank operating in India.
--Applications can be in Hindi or in English. The research work and
presentation can also be in either Hindi, English, or a combination of
the two languages.
*Please note that this year the schedule for the Independent Fellows
programme has changed.*
--The research fellowship will run from March 2007 to the end of October
2007, with a final workshop that all fellows are expected to attend. It
will award up to Rs 70,000 during this period.
--Fellows will be required to make a minimum of six postings, one per
month, on Sarai's "reader-list" email listserve, between February and
the end of August 2007.
--A working draft or initial prototype of the final work will be
expected by the end of September. The final presentation of the research
project will be made in Delhi at the beginning of November 2007.
--The fellowships do not require the fellows to be resident at Sarai.
--Although participation in the fellowship programme does require a
substantial time commitment—to the research, the postings on progress,
and interaction with other researchers and projects in the fellowship
cycle—participants are also welcome to pursue the fellowship research in
addition to their primary occupations or commitments to other
fellowships or grants, if any.
--Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives and faculty are
welcome, as long as the grant amount is administered by and through a
single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account
in the name of an individual, partnership, registered body or
institutional entity.
--Applicants who apply to other institutions for support for the same
project will not be disqualified, provided they inform Sarai if and when
support is being sought (or has been obtained) from another institution.
The applicants should also inform Sarai about the identity of the other
institution.
*What Do You Need To Send, Where and When?*
There are no application forms. Simply send us by postal mail your:
1. Name(s), email address(es), phone(s), and postal address(es).
2. Proposal (not more than 1200 words) including details of the subject,
process, mode of public presentation and rationale for the research.
Your proposal will be greatly strengthened if you are also able to
indicate the kinds of materials that you think your research project
would be able to generate for the Sarai archive. In the past, fellows
have submitted transcripts of interviews, photographs, recordings,
printed matter, maps, multimedia and posters, related to the subject of
their study, to this archive.
3. Two work samples: if possible, the samples of previous work done
should give us a sense of your preferred mode of public presentation for
this project (e.g., academic research paper, narrative prose,
multimedia, video, performance, photography, installation, sound
recording, "creative" writing, prototype design, combinations of the
above, etc.) and also suggest to us how you might understand your
upcoming research process for this fellowship. The work samples can—but
do not necessarily have to—make reference to the current research topic.
4. A clear work plan (not more than one page) with, if possible, a
month-by-month breakdown of the research work.
5. An updated CV (not more than two pages) for each applicant, and a
short text (about half a page) giving us your intellectual biography.
--Send these to: ATTN: I-FELLOWS PROPOSAL 2005-2006, Independent
Fellowship Programme, Sarai, Centre for the Study of Developing
Societies, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India.
--Enquiries: vivek@sarai.net for English proposals, ravikant@sarai.net
for Hindi proposals.
--Last date for submission: English proposals should be postmarked on or
before Tuesday, October 31, 2006; Hindi proposals should be postmarked
on or before Monday, November 13, 2006.
--The list of successful proposals for 2007 will be announced on the
Sarai website, and on Sarai's email list, reader-list@sarai.net, between
the end of December 2006 and the beginning January 2007. For more
details on joining the reader-list, please visit www.sarai.net and click
on "LISTS@Sarai".
*Who Can Apply? *
There is absolutely no pre-qualification required for application to the
Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship. Sarai invites independent
researchers, media practitioners, working professionals, software
designers and programmers, urbanists, architects, artists and writers,
as well as students (postgraduate level and above) and
university/college faculty to apply for support for research-driven
projects.
*What Other Fellowships Does Sarai Offer?*
Sarai offers an exciting "Student Stipendship" for students at academic
institutions wishing to pursue closely mentored and innovative research
(contact: Sadan Jha, sadan@sarai.net) and a "FLOSS Independent
Fellowship" for programmers and coders wishing to develop free and open
source software (contact: Gora Mohanty, gora@sarai.net). Please note
that the Sarai Media Fellowships have been discontinued.
MORE INFORMATION
*Why Research? What Do We Mean by Research? *
Sarai is committed to generating public knowledge and creativity through
research. Hence the support for research driven projects and processes.
The fellowships are in the nature of small grants in order to emphasise
the initiation and founding of projects that would otherwise go unsupported.
By research we mean both archival and field research, and forays into
theoretical work as well as any process or activity of an experimental
or creative nature—for instance in the audiovisual media, as well as in
journalism or the humanities and social sciences, or in architecture and
socially attuned computing.
We are especially interested in supporting projects that formulate
precise and cogent intellectual questions, reflect on modes of
understanding that implicate knowledge production within a critical
social framework, foregrounding processes of gathering information and
of creating links between bodies of information. We also encourage
research that is based on a strong engagement with archival materials
and imaginative ways of tackling the question of the public rendition of
research activity.
*The Experience of Previous Years*
This is the sixth year in which Sarai is calling for proposals for such
fellowships. We would like to describe how the process has worked in
previous years, as an indication of what applicants should expect.
These included work toward projects based on investigative reportage of
urban issues; essays on everyday life; a history of urban Dalit
performance traditions; soundscapes of the city; a graphic novel about
Delhi; a documentation of the free software movement in India; research
on displacement and rehabilitation in cities; interpretative catalogues
of wall writings and public signages; digital manipulation of popular
studio portrait photographs; the limitations of language in shrinking
public spaces in Srinagar; histories of cinema halls and studios in
Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata; a study of the world of popular crime fiction
in Bengali; reflections on the Kashmiri 'encounter' in Delhi, and many
others. Successful applicants included freelance researchers, academics,
media practitioners, artists, writers, journalists, activists and
professionals such as nurses and bankers.
The projects were submitted in English, Hindi or a combination of the
two languages. We have seen that projects that set important but
practical and modest goals were usually successful, whereas those that
may have been conceptually sound but lacked sufficient motivation to
actually pursue a research objective on the field, usually did not take
off beyond the interim stage.
Sarai interacts closely with the researchers over the period of the
fellowship, and the independent fellows make a public presentation of
their work at Sarai at the end of their fellowship period. During the
term of their fellowship each fellow is required to make a posting to
our email list every month, reporting on the development of their work.
These postings, which are archived, are an important means by which the
research process reaches a wider discursive community. They also help us
to trace the progress of work during the grant period, and understand
how the research interfaces with a larger public.
Submissions at the end of the fellowship period included written reports
and essays, photographs, tape recordings, audio CDs, video, pamphlets,
maps, drawings and html presentations. Fellows have made their final
presentations in the form of academic papers, lecture-demonstrations and
performances.
*What Happens to the Research Projects?*
The annual research projects add to our increasingly substantial
archival collections on urban space and media culture. These are proving
to be very significant value additions to the availability of knowledge
resources in the public domain. Researchers are free to publish or
render any part or all of their projects in any forms, independently of
Sarai (but with due acknowledgment of the support that they have
received from Sarai). Sarai Independent Research Fellows have gone on to
publish articles in journals, work towards the making of films,
exhibitions, websites, multimedia works and performances, and the
creation of graphic novels, soundworks and books. We actively encourage
all such efforts.
*What We Are Looking For*
As in the past, this year too we are looking for proposals that are
imaginatively articulated, experimental and methodologically innovative,
but which are pragmatic and backed up by a well-argued work plan which
sets out a timetable for the project, as well as suggests how the
support will help with specific resources (human and material) that the
project needs.
Suggested Themes:
Sarai's interests lie in the city and in media. Broadly speaking, any
proposal that looks at the urban condition, or at media, is eligible.
Proposals for projects that seek to push disciplinary limits and
boundaries or break new ground, that offer fresh and detailed empricial
insights, that desire to engage with questions and problems pertaining
to cities, urban culture, media from a philosophically and conceptually
enriched terrain of inquiry are especially welcome. We are committed to
methodological and analytic rigour even as we are also keen to engage
with sensibilities and registers of thought that are oppositional,
dissident, heretical, imaginative and poetic.
More specifically, themes may be as diverse as the experience of work in
different locations, institutions and work cultures, histories of urban
sexuality, heretical figures and imaginations, histories of particular
media practices, legality and illegality, migration, transportation,
surveillance, intellectual property, social/digital interfaces, urban
violence, street life, technologies of urban control, health and the
city, the political economy of media forms, digital art and culture, or
anything else that the applicants feel will resonate with the philosophy
and interests that motivate Sarai's work.
We are particularly interested in work that comes from non-metropolitan
and mofussil urban spaces, even though we continue to look for strong
projects that articulate the realities of major cities.
