Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Major File-Sharing Sites Go Dark To Protest Anti-Download Law

First off today, as Spain’s government prepares to debate revisions to its copyright laws that may make it illegal to host a file sharing site, many of the country’s most popular sites protested the laws by replacing their homepages with a black page with a warning that it might be the future of those sites if the law is passed. The law in question, the Sustainable Economy Law, will likely pass today and close a loophole that allowed file sharing sites to operate within the country so long as they meet certain criteria, including not earning a profit.

2: US Gov Spending Millions to Teach Foreign Judges About Copyright

Next up today, the U.S. Government, as well as other nations, will be spending millions of dollars in 2011 to educate judges and other officials about intellectual property law. The money will go to Interpol as well as countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Philippines that are seeking to crack down on intellectual property issues.

3: DiMA reacts to CRB’s proposals for Internet radio performance royalties

Finally today, in a story that I missed, the Copyright Royalty Board in the U.S. declined to raise royalty rates for Internet streaming sites, despite please from royalty collecting services such as Soundexchange. The Digital Media Association (DiMA), an organization that represents online music streaming services and retailers, applauded the decision citing the more than three-fold increase in royalties from the past three years.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

This has kicked off an international incident that has resulted in a back and forth war against the site. First Wikileaks lost its domain and had to move to a Swedish extension, then had issues with its DNS provider pulling out. After that PayPal, Mastercard and Visa all stopped processing donations for the site. This, in turn, has prompted others to lead various other attacks against the companies involved, even if they have sometimes been misguided.

However, at least some have wondered what role copyright plays in this case. Though some of the cables have been about intellectual property, including several that showed U.S. involvement in writing Spain’s draft copyright legislation, no one, yet, has tried to use copyright as a tool to silence the site.

After all, Wikileaks is copying and distributing works of creative authorship. Why has copyright not played a bigger role in the Wikileaks scandal, it seems a logical choice?

The reason is simple, copyright doesn’t have a role in this leak because none of the cables are copyright protected. This is due to a move made by the U.S. Government to protect free speech.

However, it is worth taking a moment to look at this reasoning as it is something that has implications far beyond Wikileaks and other, similar sites.

Though some of the cables

The Largest Public Domain Donor

The law on the matter is very clear, all works created by the U.S. Government are released into the public domain. This means all works created by Federal employees as part of their normal duties are, almost without exception, entered into the public domain.

Since the leaked cables were all written by U.S. employees as part of their job, the law applies directly. It may not have been the material the law was intended to cover, but it clearly does.

Still, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, some autonomous agencies, such as the U.S. Postal Service, may not be considered part of the U.S. Government for this purpose. Also, the government can have copyrights transferred to it, including by purchase.

It is also worth noting that this rule does not apply to state and local governments, which can still hold copyright in their creations, nor does it apply to other countries, which often have copyright protection in their government’s work, such as the UK’s Crown Copyright.

Still, the law is clear in this case, the cables are not protected by copyright and though there may be many other legal issues with copying them and spreading them, an issue that is up for debate, copyright infringement isn’t one of them.

Bottom Line

It’s important to note that the reason this was written into the law was so that copyright could never be used as a vehicle to silence criticism of the government. Though the government has many other legal tools to keep its documents out of public hands, copyright is not one of them.

This is why copyright, beyond what may be in the cables, is not a factor in the WIkileaks case.

Still, it will be interesting to watch the actions that the government does take in this matter as we are learning the ways, as controversial as many of them are, that the government is trying to control and restrict the flow of its content without the aid of copyright law.

That may say more about the future of the Web than anyone ever intended, especially considering that it is likely future legislation, both in the U.S. and abroad, will likely reference this leak and be written with it in mind.

However, in terms of content and copyright issues, the White House site is almost a polar opposite to the challenges that others face. Where most Webmasters have to find a way to balance the rights they want to give away vs. the ones they are willing to surrender, most of the content on the White House site is already in the public domain, by virtue of it being created by the U.S. Government.

That surrendering of rights is furthered even more by Obama’s promises to run a more open administration and present a “Google” government, something his site would likely represent.

But even though the site is far from a finished product (it is only a few days old), many of its policies are already in place. Though it is likely too early to really grade how “open” the Obama WhiteHouse.gov site is, we can still get an idea of some of the steps that his Web team is taking to ensure that it is as “Google-Friendly” as possible.

Here’s what I found.

The Copyright Policy

Obama’s Web site follows protocol of most of the Web and has a “Copyright Information” link in the footer of the site. The copyright policy is very short and sweet, first clarifying that all work produced for the site is in the public domain, including what that means, and then informing users that anything they submit to the site is licensed under a CC-BY license, making it available for reuse with attribution for any purpose.

The second part of the license is a very brief DMCA policy that, as the law requires, informs users that they respect the intellectual property of others and will terminate the accounts of repeat infringers. Though it is unclear how that applies with this site, it meets the requirements of the law as I understand them.

Overall, I am very impressed with this policy. Not only does it plainly state that the work of the site is in the public domain and offers a clear, practical explanation of what that means, but the site also goes to great lengths to ensure that works by others posted to the site can be used freely as well, with only the minimal restriction of attribution.

The only issues I have with the copyright policy are that A) The policy does not actively link to the CC license in question, making it difficult for those unfamiliar with the license to read the terms of it and B) The DMCA information does not provide the contact to report any infringements. Though the latter does not strike me as urgent at this time (I can’t imagine what content one would file a notice over), it does seem an odd omission.

Current Grade: B+

The Robots.txt File

The new robots.txt file of the new White House site has already drawn a great deal of attention. It is a simple and beautiful file that allows search engines to index the entire site, save a folder entitled “includes”, which likely contains elements used to compile the site. Restricting search access to this folder makes sense as all data from it will be in other pages and, thus, allowing access would have created duplicate content.

If you’re gunning for openness and free access, it is hard to imagine a more perfect robots.txt file.

Current Grade: A+

RSS Feeds

RSS is going to be an important part of any “wide open” and “Web-friendly” government site, however, this is one area the new White House site disappoints. Though the home page offers a collection of five RSS feeds you can subscribe to, only a few of them worked in my testing and all of the ones that do are heavily truncated, displaying only the first sentence of the post.

Both the AP and Reuters allow more of their content to appear in their RSS feeds.

In defense of the new site, it may be a limitation of the software they are using as their blog main page is also heavily truncated. This could be something they work on in the future. Also, one still has to give the site team credit for making RSS feeds such a critical part of their Web strategy and including so many of them.

That being said, I can imagine many were disappointed to subscribe to the blog feed at the White House and discover that it was a very partial feed.

Current Grade: C-

Video

I was surprised to find that the video on the site is hosted by YouTube and all of the videos can both be embedded freely into other sites and downloaded in high resolution format. The White House even has its own YouTube channel, currently with only three videos.

All in all, it is an impressive effort to both make the content available freely and to put it where people already are, rather than hiding it on sites people rarely go to.

Current Grade: A

Feedback and Comments

Though not directly a part of the openness of the site, two-way communication or at least a chance for visitors to talk back to the site is an important part of transparency for many bloggers. Unfortunately, the current White House site does not allow comments on its blog at this time.

However, one can hardly fault the Web team for that. If you read the comments on the YouTube videos, you’ll quickly see why they might want to prevent users from commenting publicly.

Unfortunately though, even the site’s email contact form seems needlessly limited. It asks for, though doesn’t require, a great deal of personal information, including phone and address, and then limits the action email to a mere 500 characters, roughly the length of 3.5 Twitter tweets.

Though, again, it is hard to fault the administration for not wanting to open up their inbox to every person with a long-winded rant, Dominos Pizza gives you 1000 characters when filing a complaint.

Current Grade: C

Overall Average

Though it’s tough to give an overall average as the elements above can not and should not be weighed equally, the feeling I get is that the administration, so far, has earned a solid B+. There is room for improvement, but the work has been very solid over all and I am very impressed with the progress that has been made.

Final Thoughts

No matter what you may think of Obama’s political views, it is clear that his administration has taken some great steps to be more Web-friendly and be more open onlne. Not only does its Web presence offer an easily-searchable site with a solid copyright policy, but it is working to share its multimedia content broadly and put it where it can be found.

Though there are some weaknesses, namely with the RSS feeds and the contact forms, such hiccups should be expected so early into a site launch. The fact that it has come as far as it has in the short time that it has is very impressive.

The Obama administration is already well on its way to being the most Web-friendly in the short history of the Web. I really like what has been done so far but would like to see it improve and grow in the coming months.

A lot of good work has been done but there is still more to do if one truly wants the most open experience possible. Fortunately, I think we’ve seen more than enough “good faith” from the administration to assume that they are working to make that happen.

Needless to say, no matter what happens, the whole of the Web will be watching.

The system, which has been in beta testing for nearly a year, enables copyright holders to register their works with the USCO online. This lowers the cost of registration to $35 and, theoretically, speeds up the registration process.

The move to push the system live was not accompanied by any announcement on the USCO site, but rather, by simply moving the ECO link to the middle of the page, replacing the previous information about registering via mail, and pointing the “registration” tab to the ECO system.

According to the site, paper forms are still available but can not be downloaded on the site. Instead, one has to request that the USCO mail them copies in order to receive them. Also, I still have electronic copies of many of the paper forms if anyone needs them and they can also be found elsewhere on the Web.

I reviewed the ECO system previously and updated it shortly after. However, it appears that the ECO system, from my brief look at it since, has not made any significant improvements from those reviews, leaving it a severely flawed system.

Still, it is worth noting that the system is available for everyone and that it is functional. If anyone has been holding off on registering their works with the USCO, waiting for the system to come online, your wait is now over.

However, I can only hope that far more radical changes will be forthcoming.

As usual, I sat down with Chris Matthieu from Numly to discuss the past week in copyright news, views and abuse.

All totaled, the show had sixteen stories, including the following:

• Pirate Bill Enters Congress
• The Pirate Bay Has Some Drama
• Demonoid Goes Black Everywhere
• Radiohead Calls Bull on Comscore
• Baseball DRM Change Throws Fans a Screwball
• And Many more…

You can download the MP3 file here (direct download). Those interested in subscribing to the show can do so via this feed (back up).

Show Notes