In an an earlier post I talked about the Microsoft campaign against thought thieves. I finally found out what they must be talking about. They must be channelling Harlan Rook

All those films he made. Those are my nightmares, not his! Every night I dream, and somehow he reads my mind. He stole my thoughts. He put my thoughts on film, and he takes all the credit. He can't get away with it. He has to pay.

Daniel Wallace has challenged the GPL license widely used for open source software. He argues that it violates the anti-trust laws by making entry into the software industry difficult because it keeps price low. Groklaw has a nice article on the dismissal of his first lawsuit. Enterprise Open Source Magazine (HT: Slashdot) is reporting the dismissal of his second lawsuit. Yet another victory for sanity in the judiciary: both judges pointed out that that it isn't anti-competitive to sell good products at low prices, however difficult it makes it for people like Daniel Wallace to enter the industry selling lousy products at high prices.

It will probably seem like I am picking on Tim Lee, but I think he is articulate and sensible. I also think that Mike Masnick is articulate and sensible, but then again, he is agreeing with me. Tim argues about my post concerning movie costs

This is a good argument, but I still don't entirely buy it. Certainly, this gives us a reason to think the optimal price for movies in the future will not be $200 million, as better technology allows us to cut the costs of the expensive special effects and film-based recording technologies that contribute to the cost of Hollywood movies. Certainly, that will bring down the cost of blockbuster movies somewhat.

...

I have the impression (please correct me if I'm wrong) that much of the cost is driven by the immense amount of labor required to create a top-quality film. You've got lighting crews, camera crews, makeup crews, set crews, sound crews, post-production crews, and on and on. Another major cost is the environment in which actors act. Either you have to move your cast and crew to a new location, which involves a lot of travel costs, or you have to construct sets, which requires considerable materials and labor for their construction.

Star Wreck had all of this. I think at this point a picture and quote should do the trick. This is the bridge of the starship in Star Wreck

In the earlier post I talked about the render farm because I thought the picture of the kitchen was a pretty low cost example of a render farm. But if you see the movie - you will realize that they have elaborate sets, ranging from the bridge of several starships - much more elaborate and larger than in the Star Trek or Star Wars movies - as for example, the set above - to battles in the snow or inside a nuclear center. How did they do this? The quote is worth repeating

A: What sets? The bridge sets are all virtual. The on-location shoots were made at locations that didn't cost any money (schools, public places etc). The "bluescreen studio" is actually a small piece of blue linoleum in Samuli's living room...

The cost in other words was essentially nothing. See the movie then read how they did it - it changed my mind about the costs of making a movie, I suspect it will change yours. BTW - I don't know what they did for a sound crew, but the sound quality sounds to me to be quite good.

A lone blogger Peter [last name unknown to me] has taken on the Amazon one-click patent. It is expensive to file patent appeals - he raised the money by asking people to vote against the patent with their dollars. He successfully raised the filing fee and has filed the appeal. He identified significant prior art that should - in a just world - invalidate the patent. His beta test of a market based procedure for getting rid of ridiculous patents continues. Let us wish him luck and give him our support.

Several IP news items today. First it is being widely reported that the Supreme Court is cracking down on patent trolls - requiring the Circuit Court not to issue an injunction without considering what the potential damages might be. This may make it harder for a company without a patent to threaten to close down a business by getting an injunction - we will see. However, they may claim huge damages on account of not being able to enter the market, so it probably won't make much difference.

In the other direction Slashdot is also reporting that Creative is suing Apple over the iPod interface. Couldn't happen to nicer guys: Apple having done their best to patent the interface as well. It is probably a good reason to sell stock in both firms.

The New York Times reports that Major League Baseball claims to own the commercial use of baseball statistics. If MLB prevails, unlicensed commercial fantasy-baseball operations would have to cease operation. Says the Times:

The dispute is between a company in St. Louis that operates fantasy sports leagues over the Internet and the Internet arm of Major League Baseball, which says that anyone using players' names and performance statistics to operate a fantasy league commercially must purchase a license. The St. Louis company counters that it does not need a license because the players are public figures whose statistics are in the public domain.... The case is scheduled for jury trial in United States District Court in St. Louis beginning Sept. 5. CBC and Major League Baseball Advanced Media filed motions for summary judgment that the court could rule on in July.

MLB already licenses operations that use player photos and team logos. But according to the Times:

Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which runs its own array of fantasy games on the league's portal, MLB.com, has decreased its number of licensees from dozens in 2004 to 19 last season to 7 this year, focusing on large multimedia outlets like CBS SportsLine and cutting out many of the four-figure licenses that had covered smaller operators' use of only names and statistics. CBC, which had a license from 1995 to 2004, filed suit to confirm that it has the right to use those limited materials freely.

Interestingly, baseball once took a different position:

When several major leaguers from the 1940's and 50's sued Major League Baseball over use of their names and statistics in materials like promotional videos and game programs, baseball argued that such use was protected by the First Amendment.

Is any comment necessary?

Cross-posted at Free Association.

Kevin Kelly has a long New York Times article about digitizing books, Google's solution to the orphan works problem, and the clash of the copyright monopoly business model versus the disruptive competitive digital technology model.
Kelly points out that the five publishers that sued Google last year are partners in the Google Book Search Partner Program. They want readers to be able to search books because it's good for their business. But like any monopolist, they don't want to give up their rents.

In an earlier post I said

While the home video is scarcely a good substitute for a $200 million movie production, the quality gap has narrowed enormously in the last 20 years, and it isn't unreasonable to think that in another 20 years, home production of "professional" quality movies will become cheap and practical.

I was off by 20 years. Take a look at the movie "Star Wreck", available as a free download. To my inexpert eye the production qualities are the same as a $200 million movie production. Since they thank six sponsors, one for "lend[ing] us a Pinnacle DV500 edting [sic] card" that retails for about $800, I think we can safely assume they didn't spend $200 million making the movie. According to their FAQ

Q: Damn, you must be very rich when you can afford a film like this...Huge sets, studios, actors and render farms!
A: What sets? The bridge sets are all virtual. The on-location shoots were made at locations that didn't cost any money (schools, public places etc). The "bluescreen studio" is actually a small piece of blue linoleum in Samuli's living room...
For Samuli this is a somewhat costly hobby, but as a movie it's still very close to a zero budget. The most expensive part of the production has been keeping the computer equipment up to date.

This is what their render farm looks like:

James DeLong, my opposition at the Cato conference, has a post at "ipcentral" titled "It's Happening." I thought that the "it" he was referring to was the vanishing of new music creation in the fact of piracy, but it seems he means "a loss of flexibility and interoperability." The fact involved is the involvement of the music industry in the cellphone industry - a fact that has been widely reported. Since cellphones are tightly controlled, this makes it easier for the music companies to generate revenue. Why is this a bad thing? DeLong dismisses the P2P culture's ethics with the quotation "it's our music and we have a right to steal it" but this isn't a quotation from anyone - just a reference to a blog post of his own denouncing Wired magazine. I'm sure there are some who just want something for free - but speaking for myself, and I feel confident the other authors of this blog, and the vast majority of those who have reservations about copyright - I am strongly in favor of artists, musicians and others earning money from their creative activities. At issue is not the right to sell - it is the right to monopolize. In the absence of monopoly, the best business model may be to give some things away for free to generate more demand for those things that can easily be sold. This an important model for open source software which generally gives away the computer code - not out of altruism but in order to generate paid demand for their services. If expensive ringtones brings money to musicians - what is wrong with that? And if the business model is one of giving away free MP3s to generate demand for expensive ringtones - what is wrong with that? There have been some complaints about musicians raising ticket prices in the face of less revenue from recorded music - and to those who complain, I would also say - what is wrong with that? What is wrong with a business model in which the recorded music is given away to generate more demand and higher ticket prices for live performances?

DeLong's complaint about interoperability and flexibility being reduced by the de facto reduction of copyright is misplaced. The fact is that one of the main uses of intellectual property is to prevent interoperability - witness the complaints over the closed iTunes platform. But even if there was some loss in this dimension - surely it would be worth the gain in freedom.

Freedom in many ways is at the heart of the debate. DeLong sees the word free and thinks it means beer. Those of us on the other side mean what the open source software movement means "free as in freedom, not free as in beer." The constant accusations that opponents of copyright - or even proponents of copyright who have reservations about particular methods of enforcement - are in favor of theft does him no credit. I might as well say that he is guilty of theft because he uses the English language - because it was invented by someone else. Intellectual property has more in common with slavery than its absence does with theft. The right being claimed by IP absolutists is the right to control my thoughts because it might have something in common with someone else's thoughts. So DeLong, who apparently believes that I support theft, won't mind if I call him a proponent of "intellectual slavery?"

A NYT article (May 9th, p A4), "Vinters with personal flair can't brag on wine labels", discusses how a new trade agreement between the EU and United States puts sharp limits on labeling of wine bottles. It seems small European growers may not be able to indicate they use oak barrels and other methods that would distinguish themselves from the larger, more "industrial" U.S. wine makers.