The Liberty Papers

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act has seen many absurd applications since it became law, but none, I think, are quite as absurd as this one:

The inventor of the “Electric Slide,” an iconic dance created in 1976, is fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more importantly, examples of bad dancing.

Kyle Machulis, an engineer at San Francisco’s Linden Lab, said he received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice about a video he had shot at a recent convention showing three people doing the Electric Slide.

“The creator of the Electric Slide claims to hold a copyright on the dance and is DMCAing every single video on YouTube” that references the dance, Machulis said. He’s also sent licensing demands to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Machulis added.

Indeed, Richard Silver, who filed the copyright for the Electric Slide in 2004, said on one of his Web pages that the DeGeneres Show had been putting up a legal fight as he tried to get compensation for a segment that aired in February 2006 in which actress Teri Hatcher and other dancers performed the popular wedding shuffle.

Silver, it seems, is quite serious about protecting his supposed intellectual property right in the electric slide:

It appears Silver has for several years aggressively defended his copyright on the dance. In 2004, Silver apparently wrote an e-mail to Donna Woolard, an associate professor of exercise science at North Carolina’s Campbell University, demanding she remove a video of the dance from a Web site. He complained the dance wasn’t being done correctly on the video, and Woolard took down the video.

Silver wrote, according to e-mail correspondence posted by Woolard, that he had sued two Hollywood production companies for using the dance in several films and that he was now adding her as a co-defendant. It’s unclear what happened to the suit.

It’s stuff like this that makes me think that the entire idea of intellectual property is nonsense upon stilts.

H/T: Slashdot

As you may have noticed, the National Football League guards it’s copyright over the Super Bowl very jealously. That’ s why you never see any retailer who isn’t an official sponsor or advertiser mention the Super Bowl in their ads for, say, big screen televisions, soda, or beer. Instead, they call it “the Big Game.”

Considering the amount of money that the game brings in, it’s not surprising that the NFL would be protective of it’s product. This, however, strikes me as an immensely inappropriate extension of the copyright law:

Churches in Indiana and across the country are scrapping traditional Super Bowl viewing parties in wake of the NFL’s stance that mass viewings of the game on big screen TV’s would violate copyright law.

The issue came to light Thursday when the Star reported that the NFL had told Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis that its plans for a Super Bowl watch party in front a big screen TV would be illegal.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Thursday the league stands by its interpretation of copyright law and would look into any violators that comes to the league’s attention. The main concern for the league, Aiello said, is groups that charge admission to watch games and those that use a TV screen larger than 55 inches to show the game.

A story about Fall Creek’s plan to cancel its game viewing plans prompted dozens of calls and more than 500 email comments to the Star’s website Thursday. Aiello said media from around the country have been inquiring with the league as well.

In Indianapolis, home of the AFC Champion Colts, Indian Creek Christian Church and Castleton United Methodist Church are among those who have cancelled plans to watch the game in their churches.

And it’s not just the issue that seems to annoy the NFL, because they even object to mass-viewing parties where no admission is charged:

Aiello said the league has a longstanding policy against “mass out-of-home viewings” of the Super Bowl, even if the hosts don’t charge admission. The NFL makes an exception to that, however, for sports bars that show televised sports on a regular basis.

Why the NFL should care if I invite 60 of my closest friends over to watch the Super Bowl, at no charge, on my bigger-than-55-inch television (if I had one, that is) is entirely beyond me. And it’s yet another example of how state-protected copyrights are used to restrict individual choice.

H/T: Vivian Paige

According to one U.S. District Court Judge in Texas, it’s against the law to hyperlink to copyrighted material if the copyright holder objects:

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that it is unlawful to provide a hyperlink to a Webcast if the copyright owner objects to it.

U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay in the northern district of Texas granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who operated Supercrosslive.com and had been providing direct links to the live audiocasts of motorcycle racing events.

Lindsay ruled last week that “the link Davis provides on his Web site is not a ‘fair use’ of copyright material” and ordered him to cease linking directly to streaming audio files.

The audio Webcasts are copyrighted by SFX Motor Sports, a Texas company that is one of the largest producers of “Supercross” motorcycle racing events. SFX sued Davis in February, noting that fans who go to its own Web site will see the names and logos of sponsors including wireless company Amp’d Mobile. (Anyone who clicked on the link from Davis’ site, however, would not see the logos of companies that paid to be sponsors.)

Think for a second about what this means. You’re not posting copyright material yourself, you’re not even quoting from it. All you’re doing is linking to it. And yet, according to Judge Lindsey, this is a copyright violation. Of course, if he’s right, then the entire World Wide Web is nothing more than one big copyright violation, as John Dvorak points out:

A link is a link. Banning deep linking is a step towards banning all linking, and what does that do for the Google business model? Where are the Google attorneys helping out in this case? Are they helping out on the appeal? If not, then why not?

How do we even use the Internet if deep linking is illegal for some reason? We don’t, that’s how. Goodbye, Amazon. Hey Jeff, did you help out on this case?

Cases like this point out the problems I have with the entire concept of intellectual property law. How am I violating your rights if I post a link on my website to something you posted on yours ?

It’s not as if I took your content and appropriated it as my own. Heck, I haven’t even altered your content to make it appear original. Moreover, if you don’t want me deeplinking to your site, the you can take steps to make sure that won’t happen, but not doing so, you are implicitly saying it’s acceptable.

Of course, as the New York Times has discovered, hiding content behind a firewall seldom leads to success.

H/T: QandO