TechnoLlama - Latest Comments

Re: Desmintiendo el mito de la declaratoria de derechos de autor en Facebook

jp — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:56:05 -0000

chupala puto

Re: Desmintiendo el mito de la declaratoria de derechos de autor en Facebook

yeahyeahyeah — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:05:42 -0000

sólo los idi otas pueden creer q eso funciona.

Re: Has Instagram replaced Kodak?

Rob Myers — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:07:03 -0000

But those jobs aren't in America... ;-)

Re: Has Instagram replaced Kodak?

greglas — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 06:24:57 -0000

Yes, well said. I've read his Gadget book, and while there are some good insights here and there, it's very inconsistent and polemical. So I wonder why he constantly gets these glowing reviews in print journalism -- I think the best explanation is that he's saying something they desperately want to hear. I.e. the old ways were best, the Internet is ruining everything.

Re: Poetic licence

Alex — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:34:55 -0000

https://github.com/alexgenaud/...

Re: Fan fiction goes legit

Andres — Thu, 30 May 2013 07:46:25 -0000

Some may argue that the Doom of Valyria was a meteorite.

Re: Doctor Who: Partners in Copyright Crime

Mat Alcudia — Thu, 30 May 2013 02:24:35 -0000

I know this is an old old topic but something new has been added to the mix. The new wave of 3D printers are coming (more like a tsunami). Now we can create 3D figures of all of the doctors, companions, Tardises and daleks we like in the comfort of our own home. If we trade the plans and 3D model programs (for free) are we going to be in the same boat as the poor lady in this article? If I sold a 3D model that makes a bust of the 9th Doctor, will i be prosecuted even if the buyer doesnt have a 3D printer? What I actually sold is a set of bits and bytes, not an actual thing. Also, the 3D model I sell can be manipulated and altered. Will I be prosecuted for infringement if I sold a 3D model of the 9th Doctor but the buyer puts his face on it? A lot of things to consider.

Re: Fan fiction goes legit

Naz — Wed, 29 May 2013 04:16:36 -0000

"There is little that a fan can think of that G R R Martin has not already done to his characters."

An asteroid hasn't hit Westeros yet. Always a real possibility.

Re: 3D printed gun poses awkward regulatory questions

Andres — Wed, 15 May 2013 08:55:43 -0000

This really is a US-centric concern, having lived in several countries with various ranges of gun-control policies, I can say without a doubt that the obsession with gun ownership is uniquely American. Nowhere else that I know of is gun ownership part of the constitution.

I am in no way advocating for the regulation of 3D printing, but it seems clear that the 3D gun is a dangerous technology. Sure, you can build your own gun nowadays, but 3D printing makes it easier, and more importantly, would make guns undetectable.

I lived 12 years in the UK with strict gun control, not once did I ever feel unsafe, or I felt a criminal for not being able to own a gun.

Gun ownership is not about freedom, I don't feel less free for not being able to own a gun.

Re: 3D printed gun poses awkward regulatory questions

Bill Tuttle — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:19:56 -0000

"Guns are a right that should not be denied to people. Guns are freedom" is NOT US centric, it is true world wide.

"Governments recognise the danger, and that is why the US acted quickly to remove the plans from Defense Distributed’s website." What a load of crap. The only danger gov recognizes is a danger to their power of people.

Regulating 3D printers, etc is a fools game. It's strictly feel good nonsense. I can go to the plumbing dept of any hardware store and build a gun. And frankly,I should be able to. If you have criminals you don't trust with guns, why are they on the street? No amount of laws will keep them disarmed. These types of legislation on act to treat the honest people as criminals.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Crystal Nichols — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:43:55 -0000

The two biggest issues I see are that: 1- a diligent search is not spelled out, and watermarking the hell out of your artwork depreciates the quality of its appearance online. This only benefits the large corporations that want to use artwork for free. There is little to no protection left to the small artist, as there is not adequate software to search for image-matches within websites across the web. 2- The legislation places additional time and monetary requirements on the individual in order to protect their work by requiring that they file for a registration with every. single. piece. A prohibitively costly means of protecting your work, when previously "first publication" was enough to protect an artist or writer's intellectual property.

And to answer "what does the government get out of this?" They receive money from the private interest groups, the corporations responsible for pushing the concept of the legislation. They might even receive sales tax from the filing fees if the registration process is handled by a private party. If it is handled by a government agency, then they receive the entirety of the filing fee.

Corporations have all the money and all the power, and they still don't want to pay artists what they're worth. I call BS.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

JonathanMaddox — Sun, 12 May 2013 20:08:57 -0000

Privacy problem, absolutely. Bandwidth problem, not so much. Metadata is a few hundred bytes. The images in question are typically many hundreds of thousands of bytes.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

JonathanMaddox — Sun, 12 May 2013 20:07:07 -0000

Of course metadata can be removed from a photo. Maybe it *shouldn't* be, but as a technical matter nothing could be easier.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Gordon brown — Sat, 11 May 2013 16:24:28 -0000

I don't understand what are the government getting out of it?

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Tim — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:48:21 -0000

Great piece Andres - I'm so pleased someone has taken the time to respond to some of the claims being made about this recently. I responded to Andrew Orlowski's piece with similar comments to how you have presented your argument here and he just claimed I don't understand the law I was quoting. Sigh.

Thanks!

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Andres — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:53:51 -0000

Protection for metadata stripping already exists in the law, see s296ZG of the UK CDPA 1988.

I will also have to completely disagree with the take on how widely used this new power will be. Nobody is taking away any rights, the law simply allows fo a user to apply for a licence after an exhaustive search of the author of a work has been made. This is very different from the scaremongering peddled at the moment about losing rights.

As I mentioned, there are countries which have similar schemes, if you are afraid about the scheme, take a quick look at the Canadian copyright office, which has only issued 22 licences during the existence of orphan works legislation.

This is designed to be used in very few cases, all of the fears of Google owning everyone’s copyright is quite simply a fiction in Andrew Orlowski’s mind.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

D Garcia — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:50:32 -0000

There are two issues skated over by the article above.

Firstly that in the new UK legislation the emphasis is not on deriving a “greater good” by keeping the new rights confined to non-profit museums, galleries and academic institutions; a kind of “fair use”, as exists in other countries. The UK legislation has been overly influenced by the big publishing and media corporations to allow them to PROFIT from this new law, ironically these same businesses are the ones currently accused of not paying their full taxes. Way to go UK parliament.

Secondly the writer tries to say there will still be full copyright protection under the new law, legally this may be dubious at best depending on how a court perceives the moral rights part of copyright protection. Permission to license/use is at the heart of copyright and IP law, by taking that right away from the copyright holder it makes the concept of copyright meaningless.

Most creators that I know would have had little issue with a genuine attempt to unlock collections of orphan works held by museums ands academic institutions, but it is a very different matter if Google want to license an orphan work, perhaps an image of mine of an aircraft, to advertise, say, a defence contractor company report.

The very least that Hargreaves should have done is to demand that removing/altering Metadata without the copyright holder’s permission, is a criminal offence.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Rob Myers — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:20:44 -0000

Metadata stripping may look like a conspiracy to steal the valuable juices^Hwork of photographers but there are two good reasons for removing metadata in order to help the users of social networking sites. The first is that metadata is a privacy problem. The second is that metadata is a bandwidth problem.

Photographers should join DACS. They always brag how much money they get for their members from unauthorised use of copyrighted works. *I'd* join DACS if they did CC license enforcement...

The real story here is the one you identify near the end. There has been a concerted campaign to terrify photographers into a moral panic, and it's not the first time this has happened.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Andres — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:10:41 -0000

Thanks Greg,

Very interesting point about metadata stripping, I didn't know about it, and it is a direct circumvention of RMIs!

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Andres — Fri, 03 May 2013 11:08:38 -0000

Excellent point, thanks! It does look like the threshold will indeed be high.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Stef Pause — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:06:10 -0000

There's also some indication as to how the government intended/intends to act re. the definition of diligent search, etc. in the IPO's response to their Consultation on Modernising Copyright back in 2011:
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/response...

In particular:

• Diligent search before something can be used as an orphan work is key to the scheme. The Government believes that it is important to strike the right balance between a relaxed standard of diligence and for an “awaiting claim” approach, as against ensuring that absent rights owners’ needs are protected. The Government is mindful of the need to ensure the process is sufficiently straightforward to be useful to potential users. The authorising body will verify the diligence of the searches.

• Commercial and non-commercial uses of orphan works in the UK will both be permitted, both to maximise the economic potential of proposals and because making a firm distinction between the two is difficult in practice.

• This permission should come at an appropriate price – a market rate, to the extent that one can be established (though the difficulties that may attend establishing that, for example in respect of works not created for publication that are in museums’ collections, are noted).

• This price should be payable in advance (or at agreed times if there is a royalty element) and set aside for any rights holders who may still appear even after a diligent search has not found them.

Re: Has the UK abolished copyright? Analysis of new orphan work legislation

Greg Lastowka — Fri, 03 May 2013 08:44:29 -0000

Good post -- I had the same general reaction to the Guardian piece. I'm not sure what the right calibration is for "diligent search," but this is clearly a significant problem (we established a recording system for real property, didn't we?) and we need a solution. I imagine is has to be true, though, that the smaller scale (and amateur) artists are going to be the ones surrendering "orphans" in most cases.

On your metadata point, there are some concerns about whether platforms are stripping that information out. See this from Rebecca Tushnet:
http://tushnet.blogspot.com/20...

Re: We need decentralized cryptocurrencies, we just don’t need Bitcoin

Andres — Thu, 02 May 2013 11:52:41 -0000

In the UK the definitions of electronic money are lose enough that they can be considered by the FSA. BTC is tricky because of the lack of issuer, but value is being created, so there is some need for regulation.

Having said that, I am no longer that concerned about the legality of Bitcoin, and more about intermediary regulation.

Re: We need decentralized cryptocurrencies, we just don’t need Bitcoin

Karl-Friedrich Lenz — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:26:33 -0000

Just as a matter of law, your opinion that Directive 2009/110 would apply to Bitcoin may be in need of some consideration.

To qualify as e-money, Bitcoin would need to have an issuer, and Bitcoins would need to give holders a "claim" against such issuer. Who is the "issuer" of Bitcoin? Keep in mind that under Article 1 of the Directive the issuer would need to be a legal person.

It is a different question if someone operating a Bitcoin exchange needs a permit. I think that at least for German law they do need one. And I also think that is a good thing, since it helps gaining legitimacy and trust.

Re: We need decentralized cryptocurrencies, we just don’t need Bitcoin

daz — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:38:35 -0000

I think you are missing the point by a mile. So many errors in this article.