Section 14

Technology continues to knock traditional ways of doing things out of the park. CricInfo 3D provides animations of cricket matches to viewers across the world. CricInfo sends out a tiny file to each of its viewers describing where the ball was bowled, what shot was played, where the ball ended up, and the like. The client software then visually renders the shot.

Sky Television, which has exclusive broadcast rights for the Cricket World Cup, claims that CricInfo is breaching their copyright.

Wisden, owner of CricInfo, rubbishes the claims saying that its data files are based on public domain information gathered by its staff.

It’s hard to see how Sky’s claim stacks up. While it has a legitimate interest in protecting its intellectual property, it’s outrageous to claim that it should be illegal to report - in your own words, or the technological equivalent - the results of a sports game.

Sky’s interest should be limited to the materials it has created, the broadcast video and commentary. The purpose of copyright is protect the value that the author has created in his own property, not to prevent others from creating other valuable products, and CricInfo should be applauded for their ingenuity.

Hat tip: Boing Boing.

As I said last week, copyrights and trademarks are legitimate restrictions on speech because they protect the intellectual property of an idea’s originators without preventing the expression of any point of view.

Organisations need to vigorously protect their trademarks or else risk them falling into general use and becoming unprotectable. “Petrol” was once a trade name, “Coke” has come to mean any sweet, brown, fizzy drink - although their lawyers will still come after you, and we are seeing the verb “to google” coming into common use.

The U.S. National Pork Board did not see the funny side when breastfeeding advocate The Lactivist started selling a t-shirt with the slogan “Breastmilk: The Other White Milk”. The Cafe Press site that sells the t-shirts also features other items that play on trademarks - how about “Nip/Suck” or “It’s Nipple Lickin’ Good”.

Whilst passing off your product as another brand is forbidden, parody is protected as a fair use. It’s extremely unlikely that even the slowest of people would think that the Pork Board was endorsing the product, or that the product would damage the Pork Board’s brand. Some companies actually go to great lengths to make a gratuitous link between their products and the female form.

When the lawyer’s letter came, the Lactivist blog didn’t give in but rallied its readership to harass the Pork Board into taking back its threat to sue. (Cafe Press had already removed the offending t-shirt however.)

Once again, slowly: Just because someone says something you don’t like, or you’ve a had a humour bypass, don’t have a hissy fit and start throwing lawyers around. You will look like an idiot and generate publicity for the very thing you don’t want anyone to see.

Hat tip: EFF, via Boing Boing.

Russell Brown yesterday posted a piece on Disney’s attempt to acquire trademarks on, amongst other things, Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio.

Copyrights and trademarks are legitimate restrictions on speech; they protect the intellectual property of an idea’s originators without preventing the expression of any point of view. The value of a book or film doesn’t come from the physical labour required to create the medium but from the ideas embodied in the medium and the law is there to protect the value created.

The problem with Disney’s claim to Pinocchio and the rest is that Disney did not create Pinocchio. Disney created an adaptation of Pinocchio in 1940 but the original story was first published in 1883 by Carlo Collodi, that story itself based on older sources.

Disney is perfectly entitled to have protection for the intellectual property that they created but they cannot claim blanket rights over original sources.

Their application to the Intelletual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) would give Disney exclusive use of all of these characters names on virtually any kind of merchandise. Giving these rights to Disney would not be protecting a value that they created but it would prevent others from telling or adapting stories that are rightly in the public domain.

Yesterday’s Dominion Post front page was dominated by a photograph of astronauts working on the International Space Station with Canterbury, Marlborough and Wellington gliding past below them.

Understandably, the newspaper was “swamped” with requests to buy the photograph and you can do so by calling the Dom Post on (04) 474 0204.

What’s also worth knowing is that all photographs taken by NASA (and many other US government agencies) are placed in the public domain. No copyright applies so you can reproduce the photograph for yourself at no cost. Download from the STS-116 flight day 4 photo archive - in low res or high res - and print at will.