MoHDI » Cooking Ideas

The future of copyright?

DJ_Norto — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:44:52 +0000

Alternatives to old intellectual property model offer flexibility, change
In 1984, a disaster of Orwellian proportions was averted by the Supreme Court when it ruled that home taping of television programs for later viewing constituted fair use. Universal Studios and the Walt Disney Company filed suit against Sony eight years earlier over the copyright implications of the Betamax VCR.
“Were it not for the fair use doctrine,” Fred Von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “whistling a tune while walking down the street, cutting out a New Yorker cartoon and posting it on your office door or quoting a line from The Simpsons in an email to a coworker would be infringing.”
Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act outlines a four-factor test to determine whether utilization of another’s copyrighted idea is “fair use.” Affectionately called “F.U.” by its proponents, its ambiguous, case-by-case nature is both its means for dynamic application and its greatest weakness.
“A wide variety of activities depend upon fair use for legitimacy,” Lohmann said.
Lohmann asserted that when the public is permitted to use copyrighted works freely, a powerful incentive arises to develop new technologies that help the public get the most out of media content. “It has served as a catalyst for innovation and buttress for competition. In the absence of fair use, even industry-endorsed products and services like MP3 jukeboxes and Internet radio would infringe copyright.”
“It would be curious if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property,” Thomas Jefferson wrote on the subject. “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
Creative Commons is an organization that believes the founding fathers’ notions of intellectual property are being despoiled by new legislation that restricts the flow of works into the public domain. Patents expire and, if not renewed, others can manufacture derivative adaptations of the original design, potentially allowing millions of songs, texts, films and dances to be used for content or inspiration.
As the winner of Creative Commons’ film contest puts it, “Creativity always builds on the past. Copyright law restricts your access to the past and restricts other people’s access to your work.”
Elliott Adams, a graduate student at Portland State University, attended a conference where Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons Project, spoke last week.
“Even the idea of a Creative Commons is very much on the periphery of mainstream culture, but will become more and more relevant as artists continue to produce more of their art in the digital, networked realm,” Adams said.
“The idea needs legitimacy outside of the computer and academic worlds,” Adams said, “and that will happen naturally as we move toward this environment of complete digital production and distribution.”
Amendments to copyright law have produced confusing results. For example, since 1978, authors do not need to inform readers that they are copyrighted. Prior to 1978, copyright notice, or the “circle c” logo, ©, and registration with the Library of Congress were required for copyright protection. This, along with the seemingly arbitrary extension of copyright terms from 50 to 70 years (via the Sonny Bono Act, AKA Fairness in Music Act of 1998), have produced Catch 22s of maybe-maybe not exclusions.
Creative Commons raises the point that since “it can be easy when you skip the intermediaries — couldn’t it be easier still?” By introducing dynamic, specific licensing for every conceivable circumstance, they have broadened horizons for those who’d take no offense at seeing their ideas remixed, whether a song or software application.
Creative Commons’ first project, in December 2002, was the release of a set of free copyright licenses for public use. Taking inspiration in part from the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GPL), they developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain — or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions.
Of course, civilian licensing and enforcement agencies like the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC) have sought to protect creative rights for decades. But their thinly-guised partnerships with organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which joined forces with the FBI to unveil an anti-piracy warning seal Feb. 19, seem more intent on protecting corporate capital than artist’s ideas — as evidenced by the formation of the Artist Empowerment Coalition (AEC).
“The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are receiving wider and wider support,” said Debora L. Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School recently to the New York Times. “It’s no longer a wacky idea cloistered in the ivory tower; it’s become a more mainstream idea that we need a different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of activities in cyberspace.”
“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation,” Jefferson wrote. “Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”
For licenses, instructional Web-videos and links to free content, visit creativecommons.org.

The Otter Pop Bandolier

Khris — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:33:55 +0000

Here’s another idea that came out of the Forums. Drew suggested an Otter Pop Belt that could keep the treats cold, which I thought was a great idea since I love Otter Pops, but I thought the belt might get a little too chilly. The bandolier would ideally be lined with some sort of warm material, like wool, that would keep your chest warm. You could be the life of the barbecue, just like the guy pictured above.

Annie’s Inkpad Doormat

Drew — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 03:53:22 +0000

If you want to run a good company, hire a good staff. Annie had this idea for us today. I really like this one.

The idea is that when you leave the house you put this inkpad doormat out, then if any burglars happen to stop by you can easily catch them in their tracks.

This is a fantastic Hundred Dollar Idea.

Nice work Annie!

Stuffed Animal Surgeon

Drew — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:45:18 +0000

please see the sketchbook notes for more information

Have you ever seen that store where your children can Build-a-Bear? At some point during the process of building a bear the child actually inserts a plastic heart into the bear. This makes me feel sort of sorry for all the other stuffed animals a child might have that do not have hearts and other body parts for that matter. Why not give children the opportunity to do some simple surgeries on various stuffed animals and dolls?
Stuffed Animal Surgeon, when developed is going to be a kit that you can buy off the MoHDI site, there will be different kits depending on the type of surgery you can perform.
We are gathering information for the following types of procedures.

Heart Surgery (give them a heart)
Brain Surgery (make your stuffed toys smart)
Digestive System Insertion (for pooping and peeing)
Tear Duct operation (so you stuffed toys can cry)

There are many more operations that we will work with in the near future.

Kits will include a variety of items including appropriate body parts and surgery tools.
A lot of body parts for these operations can be found at a novelty store like these.

http://www.mcphee.com/
http://www.lippmancompany.com/

Since this should be a learning experience for the child and we would also like to market this to medical students, instructions for each operation should be as accurate to real life as possible and include graphical details of the procedures.

This is an exciting idea and we are confident that it has potential to pull in literally hundreds of dollars. As this is a work in progress all suggestions are welcome.

Keep checking back for updates.

Describbles.com

Drew — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 08:15:57 +0000

One of the latest Hundred-Dollar Ideas we have developed is Describbles.

Describbles Rundown

A person goes to the site.
They write a description of something and make a payment.
One of our fine staff of artists draws this description.
The person receives the drawn out description.

This MoHDI product is sure to pull in literally hundreds of dollars. We are still working on the pricing model of this, right now it’s looking like we are going to charge an initial amount for a certain number of written characters, for a more detailed description drawing, we would charge for each additional character.
We have talked about using MoHDI’s slide payment system (in development) for this as well. Slide pay is a nice term for the more you pay the better your product is, it fit’s well with MoHDI’s business model.
We believe this is a service that anyone could benefit from. The uses for this service are virtually limitless.
You Describe it, we draw it!

We will keep you updated at MoHDI.com of any updates to the product and hope to have the site ready for our big launch party!