more on reply to criticism Fwd: Re: [CSL Colloq] Controlling Digital Cloth * 4:15PM, Wed May 12, 2004 in Gates B03 (fwd)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Sorry it got out of order. Just started using my mac 17" again djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lenny Foner <foner-for-ip () media mit edu>
Date: May 9, 2004 2:01:15 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net, Dennis Allison <allison () shasta stanford edu>
Cc: foner-for-ip () media mit edu
Subject: [IP] reply to criticism Fwd: Re: [CSL Colloq] Controlling 
Digital Cloth * 4:15PM, Wed May 12, 2004 in Gates B03 (fwd)

[Dave: For IP if you wish.]

    Date: Sat, 8 May 2004 10:50:56 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Dennis Allison <allison () shasta stanford edu>

    Well, if were my choice......

In the larger scope of things, it -is- your choice (and Stanford's).
Because of this, I'm going to speak strongly and not let you get away
with saying, "I'm only doing my job."

    The work Ari's doing is interesting but it appears only in films 
like
    Harry Potter.  Showing clips from the films is impossible if we 
broadcast
    or webcast because the copyright owners won't allow it.

This is insane.

Copyright has a concept called fair use.  I'm sure you've heard of it.
(Yes, I'm being snide---I know you know this, but I'm going to be
pedantic and restate it, because apparently the lesson has been lost.)

The entire -point- of fair use is the UNAUTHORIZED REUSE of SMALL
PORTIONS of a work for SCHOLARLY OR CRITICAL PURPOSES.

Neta bene the term UNAUTHORIZED.  That means that the copyright owner
need not grant permission.  You don't have to ask, and EVEN IF THEY
OBJECT, you still get to use it.  This ability was written into law
precisely to enable hostile reviews of others' work, without the
ability of the copyright holder to gag a reviewer from giving an 
example.

I can't imagine a clearer-cut case of fair use than a researcher
showing clips of a work in a public lecture in order to talk about
how the clips were made.

Furthermore, the copyright owners' concerns are, quite frankly, nuts.
Everyone who has ever seen a webcast knows that the quality of the
video is, to put it bluntly, terrible.  A webcast of a video clip is
generally even worse than the quality during the rest of the talk,
because webcast feeds have trivial amounts of bandwidth and therefore
have difficulty encoding even the relatively small interframe deltas
made by someone standing at a podium.  The quality of a video clip
being transmitted through a webcast is so awful that no one in their
right mind would ever try to use it for anything---and anyone who
-did- want to use it for anything could simply go out and rent the
movie and copy it themselves.  [If they had no clue at all about
defeating Macrovision (VHS) or CSS (DVD), they could -still-
aim a video camera at their TV and get much better results than
someone receiving a webcast.  And the Copyright Cartel knows this.]

And if you -really- wanted to to wimp out on the important issues, yet
broadcast the talk, you need merely turn off the video whenever a clip
is being shown.  Extra points for putting up a big sign saying, "THE
COPYRIGHT HOLDER IS BEING STUPID BUT WE'RE GOING ALONG WITH IT EVEN
THOUGH WE HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO SHOW YOU WHAT YOU'RE MISSING."
After all, given the terrible quality of 
video-re-encoded-through-webcast,
it's not as if the viewers would be missing much, but at least that
way they'd get the rest of the talk.

                                                             She's doing
    interesting work which deserves a forum.  And, we have folks who are
    interested.  The ILM presentations have historically been amongst 
our most
    popular.  So, we try to meet the needs of our diverse community by
    presenting the talk in an open and public forum (but not broadcast 
or
    webcast) and present an alternative talk to the folks in television 
(and
    web) land.  As a practical matter, the alternative is not to 
present talks
    on topics like this at all.

No, the alternative is to tell both the researchers presenting the
talks -and- your intended audience that you intend to make fair use of
anything presented, that fair use will cover your rebroadcast of any
small segments of copyighted content presented, and that you will
refuse to allow to speak anyone who won't abide by this policy.

Why do this?  Because the collective pushback from unhappy presenters
and unhappy audience members will exert some pressure on the copyright
holders to be reasonable.  (Or will perhaps cause Stanford's IP
lawyers to give you the green light and to run interference from
whichever copyright holders are threatening you.)

If, on the other hand, you pursue your current policy of appeasement,
you are simply opening the door to an ever-more-intrusive regime of
simultaneously unreasonable, senseless, and lawless attempts at
coercive control of thought and expression.  Stanford is a great
university.  It can lead by example, and sway others, or it can
capitulate, and be publicly derided for cowardice.  I'm doing the
latter to try to convince you, and maybe Stanford, to do the former.

Consider this.  MIT doesn't even -have- a law school, and yet it has
led by example both in fighting ITAR and other US governmental
controls on expression (e.g., the crypto wars and MIT's distribution
of PGP), and in fighting lazy and unprincipled legal demands from IP
holders (e.g., the recent RIAA subpoenas filed en masse and in the
wrong state).  On the other hand, Stanford has a world-class law
school.  Perhaps you can convince some of its faculty to assist you in
fighting these unjustified controls on the way you conduct your own
classes.  It should be publicly embarrassing to Stanford to simply
roll over and accede to unlawful and ridiculous copyright demands when
MIT (which has no in-house legal faculty and which must therefore pay
internal and external counsel without even getting a research or
reputation boost from the money it spends) demonstrates that it is
all too willing to call such bullies to task.

The choice---and its effects on how your colleagues see you---is yours.

    For the record, we always have a disclaimer in the course 
information that
    explains the occasional need to not broadcast a talk or blackout a
    section.  This quarter it appears in restated form in the webpage 
header.

    We do have students who are enrolled from afar, a goodly number of 
them.
    And we have a much larger community world-wide that tunes in for
    the occasional talk.  It's unfortunate that we cannot provide them 
access
    to talks of this sort, but the current attitudes (paranoia) of the
    copyright owners and the current copyright laws are not friendly to
    academic video distribution.

    Hope all is well with you.

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