Michael Zimmer.org

Just in time for the sections on intellectual property and fair use in my “Information Technology Ethics” class, the Israeli artist Kutiman released a brilliant collection of YouTube video mashups called “Thru You” (his site has been down due to traffic, but the mashups are also available here and here).
Kutiman has taken existing YouTube videos of people playing music alone, sampled, looped, mixed and mashed them together to make absolutely amazing new music. Here’s a sample:

These songs are genius. They are original. Yet, most interpretations of existing copyright laws would …

A group of legal, cultural, and social scholars have published a “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video”, providing an important framework to help address the growing challenge of allowing fair use of online content in the face of more-and-more-powerful DRM and intellectual property right regimes, which inevitably over-protect content and often restrict valid fair uses.
Here is the introduction:
WHAT THIS IS
This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright …

Alex Cameron has posted a nice essay on “The Nexus of Intellectual Privacy and Copyright” at the ID Trail Mix blog. Its opening salvo:
For nearly three centuries since the enactment of the world’s first copyright statute, individuals have been free to travel the kingdom of copyright as countrymen, enjoying the delightful objects to be found there, in private and without any notice taken. Historically, neither copyright law nor copyright holders have interfered with individuals’ freedom to enjoy copyright works in private. This centuries-old relationship between copyright and privacy has changed …

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent page summarizing the MGM v. Grokster case and a complete listing of all the supporting court documents and amicus briefs related to the case. From their page:
EFF is defending StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software, in an important case that will be heard before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 29, 2005.
Twenty-eight of the world’s largest entertainment companies brought the lawsuit against the makers of the Morpheus, Grokster, and KaZaA software products, aiming to set …

[source: The Trademark Blog]
The new Google toolbar adds links to content through a function named Auto-Link.  For example, it is my understanding that if an address appears on a webpage, a program in Google’s toolbar can create a link from that address to, perhaps, Google’s map service.  This has stirred some controversy, as it gives Google the ability to steer traffic off the page to one of its services or advertisers.
Does the third-party addition of links to content create an unauthorized derivative work or is it within the implied license created …