Lisa Borodkin

StrikeTV October 30, 2008

Posted by lborodkin in : Uncategorized , add a comment

Here’s my LAist post on StrikeTV, the internet television network conceived a year ago during the writers’ strike and launched during Digital Hollywood this week.

Fair Use, Music and Political Campaigns October 16, 2008

Posted by lborodkin in : Uncategorized , 14comments

Photo by s fitzstephens under Creative Commons license.

I just read the letter from Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart to the McCain campaign objecting to their use of “Barracuda” as entrance music for Sarah Palin. A similar issue came up today with Bon Jovi and last week with The Foo Fighters’ “Hero”.

Illegal uses or not, the reactions of the artists show the significance of the non-economic rights granted by copyright. These include the right to approve derivative works. In August, Jackson Brown sued the McCain campaign for using “Running on Empty” in a campaign commercial without permission.

Attribution matters.

How much? Traditionally, recording artists retain the right to approve licenses of their music for political advertisements. It’s a custom that the music business has respected, even cultivated, in the grand American tradition of protest music. Free speech includes the freedom not to be associated with a cause one disagrees with.

Many non-commercial Youtube videos incorporating TV clips or music are defended as fair use. McCain invoked fair use when Youtube took down a campaign video that used unauthorized CBS clips. Youtube declined, suggesting that the McCain campaign send a counter-notification under the DMCA.

Here’s some thoughtful debate from Lessig Blog on the tradeoffs between allowing borrowed clips and music under the fair use doctrine versus requiring permission from copyright holders.

It’s not exactly censorship. If you use someone else’s material, the owner can ask to have it removed. It’s an assumed risk nowadays. Isn’t it desirable anyway to avoid the PR problem of band after band declaring how much they dislike your candidacy?

BigBrainBoy Mobile Media Summit at The Hollywood Hill September 16, 2008

Posted by lborodkin in : Uncategorized , add a comment

Last Friday and Saturday, The Hollywood Hill held the BigBrainBoy Mobile Media Summit featuring panelists on the latest mobile technologies for social good. Here’s a sample:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

1. Nathan Eagle discussed txteagle. The project is searching for applications for the large, underutilized potential workforce in Africa who are equipped with mobile devices. They have a staggering amount of available labor and text messaging capability. Many of them are educated. There are also greatly underutilized infrastructures in these regions open to creative proposals to use surplus airtime for commerce. The txteagle project seeks ideas for matching the workforce with tasks than can be better done by humans with texting capability.

2. Igor Jablowski discussed Yap. Yap is a voice recognition application designed specifically for mobile devices. Two examples of the potential of a voice alternative to tactile messaging are safer driving and expanding mobile interfaces for the blind.

3. Phil Libin is the CEO of Evernote. Evernote is an application designed to remember and collect information based on human memory making processes. The powerful program combines tagging and optical character recognition to approximate non-linear ways people actually recall memories. I’ve been testing Evernote in beta.

Click to play

4. Raja Sengupta (above) presented on Berkeley University’s Connected Traveler project. Sengupta’s work uses smartphone chips for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and cars. Such devices are useful for certain functions like mail shuttles, improving pedestrian-car safety, and gps mapping.

These new projects suggest better paradigms for engaging with the world, using mobile technology. Even a single tool like text messaging can redistribute labor around the globe. A shift from keyboard to voice commands can improve safety and enlarge the world for blind people. An intentionally redundant image storage mechanism makes information easier to recall in a more intuitive way.

These concepts open a discussion of tough ethical issues as well. How portable are the skills developed through text-based labor? Is it the way to financial sustainability or greater dependence on the First World? Is accountability lost when we divorce tasks from local community? What variables are introduced with audio-controlled communications? Will the capacity for outsourcing memory become a substitute — or an aid — to memory?

I tend to have an optimistic take on these issues. The pressure of the market ensures that the technology will be developed. It’s a question of how creative we get with its applications. I’d like to think that something as simple as a smartphone chip likely could ensure that nothing like the Chatsworth Train wreck ever happens again.

Lawyer2Lawyer September 6, 2008

Posted by lborodkin in : Uncategorized , 4comments

Title: Federal Copyright Law & Guns n’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy

Last week, the FBI arrested blogger, Kevin Cogill of Culver City, California, on suspicion of violating a federal copyright law for posting nine tracks from the unreleased and much anticipated Guns n’ Roses album “Chinese Democracy” on his blog.

I was asked by Law.com bloggers and co-hosts, J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi, to discuss this hot legal topic on their radio show, “Lawyer2 Lawyer” on the Legal Talk Network, along with Philip Daniels of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP.

To listen to our law-talking about the legal issues in this case, the new federal copyright law and what the future looks like for Cogill, click on the link below:

Lisa Borodkin on G'n'R Chinese Democracy Prosecution [ 36:57 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Getting up to Speed with Casey Mears August 28, 2008

Posted by lborodkin in : Uncategorized , add a comment

I caught up with Casey Mears for LAist at the tail end of the Chase.

“LAist interview: Getting up to Speed with Casey Mears” by Lisa Borodkin

He’s out of contention for this season. Luckily I had some jucy questions for Casey about changing sponsors, taking Clint Bowyer’s points and the time-honored tradition of cheating in NASCAR.

IP Protection for Blog Posts August 21, 2008

Posted by lborodkin in : Uncategorized , 7comments

Steve Kwok in China recently asked:

What is the most comprehensive law regarding IP protection for blog posts?

The short answer: the blogger retains copyright but the owner of the blog publishing system may reserve the right to sell the content back to the blogger.

Terms of Service increasingly try to carve out property rights for the owners of sites offering free publishing tools on the Internet. Fair enough, given the theory that a Terms of Service agreement is a contract between the user and the hosting site.

To take it a step further, does ownership of copyright in blog posts create property rights vis-a-vis third parties? The plaintiff in Lenz v. Universal Music Publishing Group, the “dancing baby” Youtube case thinks so.

Most of the commentary on the Lenz case focuses on whether posting the video, which embodied portions of the Prince song, “Let’s Go Crazy,” was fair use under the copyright laws. Fair use is always hotly contested, and always will be, due to the number of factors involved.

However, this case also raises the question of whether posting video to Youtube is a privilege or a right. In the first version of the complaint, Lenz claimed it is a right under her contract with Youtube. Presumably the contract arises from a user’s agreement to abide by Terms of Service. Based on that, Lenz sought damages against Universal for interfering with that right.

“Because Universal’s notice was intimidating, Ms. Lenz is now fearful that someone might construe some portion of a new home video to infringe a copyright. As a result, she has not posted a
single video on YouTube since she received the takedown notice.”

It’s a bold claim. How extensive are these rights, and how would they be quantified?

In the Second Amended Complaint, Lenz dropped the tortious interference claim. However, as user-generated content becomes an increasingly important component of new media business models, it’s worth considering whether others will test similar claims.