We don’t know how to build a general-purpose computer that is capable of running any program except for some program that we don’t like, is prohibited by law, or which loses us money. The closest approximation that we have to this is a computer with spyware: a computer on which remote parties set policies without the computer user’s knowledge, or over the objection of the computer’s owner. Digital rights management always converges on malware.

In an effort to stamp out piracy, we are stamping out legitimate fair-use rights, and accepting invasions of privacy by corporations in a way that also happens to dovetail nicely with the intelligence gathering goals of governments everywhere.

I don’t mean to sound too much like a conspiracy theory-loving whack job here. But the fact is that the same software that enables corporations to manage their intellectual property or make a profit on targeted advertising also makes it easier to spy on citizens. I’ll refer you to Evgeny Morozov’s enlightening, yet sobering book on this very subject, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (of which I have read about half thus far).

[h/t: Ben Ramsey]

In today’s brave New World, the new economics of digital distribution mean that we no longer need to shape our copyright law in ways that disadvantage creators vis-é-vis distributors unless we want to, writes Litman.

That’s Jessica Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan. She would like existing copyright law be simplified by taking the multiple rights it now grants into a single right: the author’s right to control commercial exploitation of the work, according to Ars Technica. Download the paper [PDF]

From Ars Technica:

A federal appeals court has overruled a lower court ruling that, if sustained, would have severely hampered the enforceability of free software licenses. The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

According to “Condition or Covenant, and Why Should You Care?” from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, key point was whether ‘copyleft’ licenses — in this case, Artistic License 1.0 — are covenants or conditions (read the EFF article to learn the difference).

The court ruled that the license in question specified certain conditions that had to be satisfied in order for the user to be a licensee. In a nutshell: if you don’t meet those conditions, you are not licensed, and are violating the author’s copyright.

Related: Jacobson v Katzer decision [PDF Link]

A description of what this document is:

This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances.

This is a guide to current acceptable practices, drawing on the actual activities of creators, as discussed among other places in the study Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video and backed by the judgment of a national panel of experts. It also draws, by way of analogy, upon the professional judgment and experience of documentary filmmakers, whose own code of best practices has been recognized throughout the film and television businesses.

Read it. Learn it. Remember it for your next YouTube upload.

As sites like Flickr and Last.fm move from having early adopters into the mainstream, this issue becomes more important. What isn’t clear is how the moral responsibility should be distributed. Should Flickr provide clearer rules for API use? Should Google index less? Should the people publishing photos take more care in choosing when to mark photos as public and when to mark photos as private? Should developers (like myself) be more cautious in what we allow our applications to do with the API?

I personally agree with pasmateRs (and because of his sheer pragmatism Pisco Bandito): It’s more of a Flickr API issue, and maybe even a Google issue. But as more sites release APIs, questions of ‘When does display or use cross into copyright violation?’ and ‘How can we design systems that give users the most control over how their information is repurposed?’ come to the fore.

Also worth reading

• Notes From the Field: Future of Web Apps Conference
• OAuth Spec 1.0 = More Personal Mashups?
• Lawsuit over web site accessibility for the blind becomes class action