The Washington Post pounced on the story. Sejas was cast as the wide-eyed victim, a whimpering child who offered in her defense, “I’ve never been in trouble before.” The police, unsatisfied, reportedly informed Sejas that the penalty for such a crime tops out at a year in prison and a $2,500 fine. Come to think of it, that about matches the domestic gross of “Transformers.” DreamWorks should cut Jhannet a deal.

David actually nails it — DreamWorks should have cut Jhannet a deal, for helping promote their film that actually grossed $311,381,546, certainly nothing close to matching her potential fine of $2,500.

Also, it should be noted that the law enforcement in this case were not unsatisfied, but actually befuddled by the aggressiveness of Regal. Even the state’s top prosecutor was confused by how serious everyone was taking the case:

Arlington County’s top prosecutor, Richard E. Trodden, tells THREAT LEVEL he was pressured by Regal Entertainment Group, the world’s largest movie exhibitor, to prosecute a 19-year-old Virginia woman for filming 20 seconds of Transformers.

… Trodden, the county’s top prosecutor, conceded Sejas’ crime was minimal.

Anyway, the case is ancient history at this point, but we’d just figured we’d point you to another opinion in the NYU community.

UPDATE: And another opinion! We just noticed that the above article ran opposite this opposing editorial from Anthony Marek. I guess when it rains, it pours. Marek says:

But is anyone else uncomfortable with treating a college sophomore no differently than a bona fide thief? Indeed, the prosecutor explained to Wired magazine that counsel from Regal Entertainment Group pressured him to throw the book at the unlikely perp.

And much, much more!  If any of these issues strike your fancy, and if you want to discuss this issue (from any side you want) we’ll be announcing our next meeting shortly.

• FreeCulture.org : This is the “National Organization” as we refer to it. It’s basically a good place to see who is doing what else in the Free Culture world. I’m on the board, but it’s just a title — local chapters are really where the action is at.
• Free Culture Chapters Around the World : See all the other schools where chapters are located.
• FreeCulture.org has a discussion e-mail list, and an announcements list.If you’re looking to debate and talk about Free Culture and these issues on campus, the discussion list is probably the best place in the world for that. Sign up for the announcements list as it’s a good place to learn about Free Culture news before it hits the media.
• Creative Commons, EFF, The Free Software Foundation, and Public Knowledge are the big institutional players in our world, and many people working in the free culture movement either work with them, for them, or around them. Check out their sites for more information about what they do.

More readings, and blogs after the Jump!
Some Readings:

These are all short articles that you should be familiar with if you’re getting into this world (they’re all free to download and share):

(in vague chronological order)

• John Perry Barlow. The Economy of Ideas. 2.03 WIRED 84 (March 1994)
• Samuelson, Pam “The Copyright Grab”
• Boyle, Jamie “The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain”
• Moglen, Eben “Dotcommunist Manifesto”
  
• Docotorw, Cory “DRM Talk @ Micrsoft”
  
• Stallman, Richard “Free Software, Free Society”
  

Things happen quick in this world (though, as a lawyer I once knew likes to say, “There’s never an emergency in copyright.”) so the best place to read about news is usually blogs.

• Slashdot
• BoingBoing
• Lessig Blog
• IPac Blog
• EFF DeepLinks
• Against Monopoly
• Creative Commons Blog
• The William Patry Copyright Blog
• Tech Dirt

The best way to read all of these blogs is to use a RSS reader. I recommend Google’s Reader, but you can also use Bloglines, or the reader in Safari.

This list is in now ways complete, so please add your suggestions in the comments. Thanks!

However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.

This is particularly interesting fact I didn’t know about Apple’s DRM scheme. This is certainly why they are so reluctant to release it to other vendors: the risks of loosing their licenses to the music catalogs are too great if someone leaks the DRM spec and cracks it. Then the whole world gets to pirate the iTunes store and Apple looses out on their rights to sell music in the future. Jobs realizes this and mentions it later. But the fact that he is disclosing this condition of Apple’s deal with the big 4 is news in and of itself — it is surely something he must not have been happy with from the beginning.

“On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats.”

Apple finally acknowledges that iPods are filled with mostly Mp3s. Jobs’ conclusion, however is ridiculous:

And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

3% of one’s music collection is certainly not insignificant when it comes to switching to another DRM scheme. Imagine if your car stopped working 3% of the time if you switched the gas station you purchased your fuel at. While it might be a small percentage, it is certainly enough of a disincentive to prevent users from switching hardware. Jobs is trying to absolve Apple of any wrong doing here, and I don’t buy it: vendor lock in is an attractive trait in any product for any publicly traded company tech company. Jobs hates DRM because he hates the music industry’s bullying over iTunes — if Mp3s suddenly only worked on iPods, I don’t think he’d be that upset about vendor lock in.

” Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.”

See above. Again, Apple is trying to place the blame on others for keeping secrets. If they weren’t known for their litigiousness over trade secrets, I’d take this a bit more seriously, but I still doubt Apple would have disclosed anything about their DRM scheme if the music industry didn’t stipulate this guarantee in their agreements.

“The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

This is what we’ve been saying all along. Perhaps Apple is scared of eMusic. Perhaps they’re waxing philosophical for a PR stunt; bluffing because the music industry would never go for it. Or perhaps they’re for real. I’ll wait for iTunes to start selling Mp3s.

“If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.”

Indeed.

“… DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. “

Something about pluralizing DRM seems awkward, but I agree.

“Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free.”

This is reminiscent of the Google vs. China debate. Why blame Google when China’s the real evil? Some information is better than none, and DRM’d music is better than no music. Except that in a world void of DRM, there still is music — on CDs, on p2p networks, and the web.

Apple exploited an opportunity to gain financially through the implementation of a scheme that unnecessarily encumbers the rights of users and musicians. They could have dug in their heals and kept selling iPods without a music store, and the music industry could have figured out all these painful lessons on their own. Now Apple is an accomplice and has cried wolf: why should the music industry listen to a company that has been profitably going along with their plan for so long? When everyone makes the switch to Mp3 Apple will appear impatient and rebellious, not staid and justified, as opposed to eMusic.

“Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.”

Good to hear that Apple will be ready and willing to hold their hand — and this is a great contrast to Microsoft’s official position on the matter, but it is not enough. As long as iTunes keeps selling DRM’d music the music industry will be able to point to the 2 billion tracks sold as justification for further support of DRM. Apple needs to offer them an ultimatum: no more by DRM by 2008 and we’ll make sure you’re handsomely rewarded in the form of much more business.

Click here for exclusive coverage of Jimmy Wales’ presentation on Wednesday the 31st.

Click here for exclusive coverage of Cory Doctorow’s presentation on Friday the 19th.

Thanks again to Mike and NowPublic.com for hosting the video and photos!

These stories are for filmmakers or dramatists to adapt. They’re available non-exclusively — meaning other people may be working from the same material — and the cost is a dollar apiece.

There’s a simple written agreement to sign, which imposes a couple of restrictions, and that’s it — once you’ve paid your dollar and signed the agreement, you’re free to adapt or mutate the story as you please.

People are making films, writing songs and doing all kinds of other cool things with Lethem’s work. Check out more information here.

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.

This is the exemption that Peter Decherney testified for. Peter is a film historian and often needs to show examples of films in his class. He usually compiles a series of quick clips from films to demonstrate a particular theme or example. Since quite a few films are available on DVD now, he uses them as his source medium, and instead of swapping in and out DVDs, he creates montages to keep the content engaging. Up until now (or rather the 27th of November), this has been illegal — Peter has been breaking the law in order to teach a class on film history. Because of this exemption, Peter and teachers like him are able to circumvent the CSS (ostensibly using DeCSS) in order to create engaging content for their students.

2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

There’s a huge demand for abandonware. So much so, that the big players have started incorporating functionality into their consoles so that users can buy old games for relatively little. Nintendo is intending on offering old NES and SNES games for $5 on the Wii. But then there are the games that were made for consoles whose parent companies went out of business, or simply stopped producing the hardware. Suppose you’re interested in researching a particular game for the Sega CD (check out this gem of a game by Penn and Teller) and you can’t get your hands on any hardware that works. There’s a need, then, for an emulator that works properly. My understanding is that under the DMCA, one could consider a console (or the media that games are stored on) as copy-protection technology itself (going out on a limb here..) and thus be prohibited from creating an archive copy of the console software or the game software in order to make an emulator. That is, under certain interpretations the DMCA prohibits archiving of old video games or computer programs. This exemption would seek to allow archival uses of programs or video games regardless of what copy-protection may have been originally used to prevent copying.

3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

You are an industrial manufacturer and paid $25,000 for a program in 1995 that contains all of the data for your manufacturing process. In an attempt to avoid “piracy” the manufacturer of the program includes a dongle — a piece of hardware that ensures you have a right to run the software you have purchased. Every time the program on your computer is run, it looks for the dongle and exchanges some encrypted keys to make sure that you’re the only person running the program and that the copy that is being run isn’t unlicensed or an infringing copy. Now suppose, 10 years later, that dongle breaks and becomes unavailable as the company who originally manufactured the software has gone bankrupt and is no longer suppling dongles. You, the industrial manufacturer are in quite a predicament if you want to keep using the software that you paid a license for. Your dongle doesn’t work, you can’t access your data, and suddenly your entire business is in jeopardy because it is illegal to “crack” the software that you purchased that is holding your data. This sounds far fetched — but it isn’t. There is some reason to believe that the software developers that force dongles into their software are in the same set of developers who are likely to go out of business; in general, the less compatible a developer’s product is, the less likely it will be popular and the more likely it is that the developer will go out of business. This is an over simplification, but it does highlight why dongles are not more commonly used.

But to get to the point — your dongle breaks, you need access to your data and/or program, and you now have at least 3 years to crack the program and get your data back without being liable for a DMCA violation.

4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

eBooks is the generalized term for electronic books that are basically PDF files with some fancy DRM tacked on. The DRM can vary in terms of its restrictions, but most, if not all of the time, it prevents the eBook reader from accessing the plaintext of the book. This means that users are not able to copy text from books (say for citations, or any other fair use) or treat it like normal text. This fundamentally interferes with screen-readers that are used in disability technology as the text-to-speech depends on parsing plain text. If text is wrapped in DRM then it cannot be read by screen readers. eBooks and DRM break accessibility technology and this exemption allows for people converting copy-protected eBooks to regular PDF or text files so that they can access them properly.

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

This details unlocking cell phones, and is covered in Uninnovate.com’s excellent post on the exemptions here.

6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.

This exemption covers security-related research. During the Sony BMG rootkit scandal, it was widely assumed that the research done to uncover Sony’s dirty little secret was actually illegal with respect to the DMCA. In discovering Sony’s rootkit, Mark Russinovich exposed himself to liability by removing and documenting the security vulnerability. Suppose instead of simply denying that the rootkit was a problem, Sony wanted to silence Russinovich. They could have leveraged the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions against the security researcher in an attempt to stop him from publicizing the problem. Instead of alerting the public to a serious security consideration, Mark would have had to deal with a DMCA cease and desist order, and Sony could have brought litigation against him and everyone who explained how to remove the rootkit.

This provision seeks to protect those who engage in “good-faith” testing of DRM in the name of security and computer science research. This probably would not have professor Ed Felten against the wrath of the music industry during the SDMI debacle.

But all of these exemptions are merely stop-gap provisions in trying to sustain the legal protections of DRM granted by the DMCA. The number of exemptions will surely increase over the years as more and more people using digital media realize that the DMCA criminalizes behavior that was once legal and accepted under normal copyright. The fact that exemptions must be continuously made and reformed must be some indication that this law is overbroad and perhaps unconstitutional.

UPDATE: Ed Felten has some comments about the exemptions here and Derek Slater has a roundup of comments as well.

Fred Benenson spent a recent drizzly Saturday afternoon with friends in Manhattan wearing yellow hazmat suits. They were in front of the new Apple store on Fifth Avenue, distributing flyers and explaining to passersby why iTunes, Apple’s online music store, “sucks.” The target of their ire: a technology the recording and film industries call “Digital Rights Management.” DRM, as it’s known, is encoded onto downloadable digital content so that copyright owners can prevent piracy. But it also prevents people from transferring downloaded content as they might like. Since different companies use different DRM technologies, an iTunes-bought song can’t be moved to a Zune, Microsoft’s new answer to the iPod, or even e-mailed to a friend. Since the vast majority of online music is sold on iTunes, “Apple has a stranglehold,” says Benenson, 23, a graduate student at New York University’s interactive telecommunications program. “There are some musicians who I like who will only offer music on the iTunes store.”

Now, an increasingly vocal grassroots resistance to DRM is cropping up. An anti-DRM campaign called “Defective by Design,” which is organized by the Free Software Foundation, has 15,000 registered members; the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that DRM places limits on “your ability to make lawful use of the music you purchase.” Web sites like stopdrmnow.org and digitalfreedom.org have been launched “to protect individuals’ right to use new digital technologies” and urge boycotts on DRM-tagged content. David Berlind, executive editor of tech trade journal ZDNet, coined his own term for DRM: “Content Restriction, Annulment and Protection.” (Figure out the acronym).

(Image from the July 2004 Newsweek issue where Steve Jobs released the 4th Generation iPod)

Full story here.

Gavin Yamey, Senior Editor, PLoS Medicine

Gavin Yamey is a product of three continents – he was born in Cape Town, raised in London, and now lives in San Francisco. He studied medicine at the University of Oxford and University College London, graduating in 1994. After five years of working as a physician in a variety of settings – including an AIDS hospice, a dialysis ward, and a brain injuries unit – he joined the British Medical Journal (BMJ)in 1999 as a trainee in medical journalism and editing. In 2001, he moved to San Francisco to be the deputy editor of the Western Journal of Medicine, published by the BMJ and the University of California. Gavin has written extensively on global health, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, and has helped to train medical editors at workshops in Barcelona and Addis Ababa.

Gavin will be presenting on his work for open access, global health, and The Public Library of Science. The Public Library of Science is an open-access academic journal that publishes all of its articles under Creative Commons Attribution licenses.

Free Culture @ NYU and The Information Law Institute Student Association Present:
Gavin Yamey of Public Library of Science
Wednesday, November 15th at 6:30pm
NYU Law School, Furman Hall 326
245 Sullivan Street
Free and open to the public (bring ID if non-NYU)

Help Creative Commons raise money for their annual fundraiser by checking out the above video. Lawrence Lessig, CC’s CEO writes:

So we’ve launched a hack of the advertising system to try to raise funds for CC a bit differently. This is a new CC video (3 minutes). It’s been Revverized — meaning at the end is an ad. When people watch the video through to the ad, we get paid. Thus, by spreading and watching our video, you can help CC. And if this technique works, maybe others as well.

You can see all our videos here. All of them have now been Revverized, though of course, we also make them available in an ad-free way. But the more who watch the Revver version, the more we raise.

So if you’d like a simple (and cheap) way to help CC, please use the email form to send the videos page to your 10,000 best friends. Ask them to send it to their 10,000 best friends. And them, to their 15,000 best friends. And soon we’ll be finished with the fundraising for the year.

So check it out and pass the Revver link along.