Yahoo! has unveiled a new Creative Commons search tool that makes it easier to find “some rights reserved,” or flexible-copyrighted, content. This is very progressive move on Yahoo’s part, and a big boost for the alternative copyright movement. Three cheers for Yahoo! for endorsing a less restrictive model for creative work!
At the moment, Yahoo! allows you to search for CC material either on the web or in Creative Commons’ own library. At least for now, it’s not possible to search within different media types – i.e. video, image, etc – though you can distinguish in your search between content available “for commercial purposes,” and content that you can “modify, adapt, or build upon.”
UPDATE: Larry Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project, comments on Yahoo! move:
“This is exciting news for us. It confirms great news about Yahoo!. I met their senior management last October. They had, imho, precisely the right vision of a future net. Not a platform for delivering whatever, but instead a platform for communities to develop. With the acquisition of Flickr, the step into blogging and now this tool to locate the welcome mats spread across the net, that vision begins to turn real.”
See article:
“Yahoo adds search for ‘flexible’ copyright content”.

Between now and March 29, when oral arguments begin before the Supreme Court in MGM v. Grokster, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is assembling a list, one invention per day, of technologies that could be considered illegal if the movie and music industries prevail in redefining the scope of permissable copying. Email, blogs, VCRs, and xerox machines are among the gadgets listed so far.
“Ever since the Betamax ruling in 1984, inventors have been free to create new copying technologies as long as they are capable of substantial noninfringing (legal) uses. But by the end of this year, all that could change. In MGM v. Grokster, Hollywood and the recording industry are asking for the power to sue out of existence any technology that appears to be a threat, even if it passes the Betamax test. That puts at risk any copying technology that Betamax currently protects as well as any new technologies Hollywood doesn’t like.
“To raise awareness about what’s at stake in the Grokster case, EFF is profiling one Betamax-protected gadget every weekday until the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on March 29. Some of these examples are in fun, some more serious, but all represent general-purpose technologies that can be used for both infringing and noninfringing purposes. Check them out and pass the word along.”
(via Boing Boing)

There’s a growing body of legal literature defending peer-to-peer file sharing in the lead-up to the Supreme Court showdown, MGM vs. Grokster. Here’s one of the latest additions, an amicus brief filed today by the Free Software Foundation and New Yorkers For Fair Use. The following excerpt nicely skewers the petioners (thanks again, Boing Boing):
“At the heart of Petitioners’ argument is an arrogant and unreasonable claim–even if made to the legislature empowered to determine such a general issue of social policy–that the Internet must be designed for the convenience of their business model, and to the extent that its design reflects other concerns, the Internet should be illegal.
Petitioners’ view of what constitutes the foundation of copyright law in the digital age is as notable for its carefully-assumed air of technical naivete as for the audacity with which it identifies their financial interest with the purpose of the entire legal regime.
Despite petitioners’ apocalyptic rhetoric, this case follows a familiar pattern in the history of copyright: incumbent rights-holders have often objected to new technologies of distribution that force innovation on the understandably reluctant monopolist.”
(see MGM vs. Grokster: Brief Update)

With MGM vs. Grokster fast approaching (initial hearings have been set for March 29), several amicus briefs have recently been filed with the Supreme Court in impassioned and eloquent defense of peer-to-peer file sharing. Notable among them are a brief filed Tuesday by a group of 17 computer scientists, and another filed today by 22 media studies scholars. Each accuses both the court and the petitioners (MGM) of “fundamental misunderstanding.” Of technology, in the view of the scientists. And in the view of the scholars, of “fair use” and the importance of p2p in the academy and in the construction of collective memory. To drive home this last point, the scholars direct our attention to the landmark 1984 Sony vs. Universal case in which the legality of VCRs (VTRs at the time) was challenged and ultimately upheld. There’s no doubt that MGM vs. Grokster is the Sony vs. Universal for this generation.
From the media scholars:
“…the unambiguous declaration by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals inGrokster — that the standards this Court set forth in Sony are alive and appropriate for this digital age — does grant educators comfort and confidence. Nor do certain “compromise” positions outlined in briefs submitted in support of neither party in this case protect the interests of educators and researchers. Ultimately, we wish to encourage the Court to consider that Sony did more than legalize home taping and “time shifting.” It democratized participation in the project of recording the collective memory of this dynamic nation. Sony went beyond the traditional parameters of fair use and showed the potential for an emerging set of clearly articulated “users’ rights.” Teachers, scholars, critics, journalists, fans, and hobbyists would all benefit greatly under a regime that offered them clarity and confidence about how they interact with works and the copyright system that governs them.”

Very interesting review of McKenzie Wark‘s A Hacker Manifesto, recently published by Harvard University Press. In the manifesto (shorter version), Wark outlines a class struggle over “vectors” – the information channels of a society. In his words:
“With the commodification of information comes its vectoralisation. Extracting a surplus from information requires technologies capable of transporting information through space, but also through time. The archive is a vector through time just as communication is a vector that crosses space. The vectoral class comes into its own once it is in possession of powerful technologies for vectoralising information.–The vectoral class may commodify information stocks, flows, or vectors themselves. A stock of information is an archive, a body of information maintained through time that has enduring value. A flow of information is the capacity to extract information of temporary value out of events and to distribute it widely and quickly. A vector is the means of achieving either the temporal distribution of a stock, or the spatial distribution of a flow of information. Vectoral power is generally sought through the ownership of all three aspects.”

High-definition TV pioneer and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban talks about what’s at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court case MGM vs. Grokster in an article drawn from a recent post on his blog. Skip down to the section titled “Taking a Wrong Turn.” There, Cuban describes what could be lost if entertainment industry giants are able to convince the court that peer-to-peer file sharing is first and foremost a tool for theft.
“In the MGM v. Grokster case, the fewer than 50 companies who control less than 1 percent of all digital information are trying to take control of innovation in the technology industry and pry it away from the rest of us. Everything our imagination creates and touches that can be made digital is at risk if Grokster loses.
“What innovations will be condemned by law before they have a chance to come to market, because they could have an impact on Hollywood and the music industry? We have no idea, and that is a very scary prospect.”

Stranded in copyright limbo, the landmark civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize cannot currently be released on DVD or broadcast on television. But music activism group Downhill Battle has recently taken matters into its own hands by digitizing the 14-part series and making it available for peer-to-peer distribution. In addition, they’ve launched the Eyes on the Screen initiative to help communities coordinate local screenings of the film in time for Black History Month.
This could go down in history as an important skirmish in the copyright wars – when the public began to act in blatant defiance of the copyright gatekeepers. Rarely have the absurdities of the modern intellectual property system been cast in such stark relief.
But the brave souls at Downhill Battle are wrong to call this act of civil disobedience “fair use” (see Wired article). Few would argue that taking a 14-part film, not in the public domain, and slapping it on public access television is fair use. The big battles over what is and isn’t fair use are yet to come, and they will be crucial in defining the parameters of scholarly and artistic production in the digital era. Let’s not give ammunition to those who would further tighten the screws by blurring the distinction between acts of protest and legitemate fair use. The Eyes on the Prize case is about the public interest plain and simple. About protesting a system that allows public treasures to languish in forced obscurity.