Readings

The readings for this week are:

Intellectual Property

1. WIPO - What is IP?

2. US Constitution - Copright Clause

3. Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson

Patent Trolls

1. The History of Software Patents: From Benson, Flook, and Diehr to Bilski and Mayo v. Prometheus

   • Analysis: Microsoft's software patent flip-flop

   • The Supreme Court doesn't understand software, and that's a problem

2. When Patents Attack!

   • Jury: Apple must pay $626 million to patent troll VirnetX

   • IBM sues Groupon over 1990s patents related to Prodigy

   • Patent troll lawsuits head toward all-time high

   • "Patent troll" with a big verdict against Cisco notches a Supreme Court win

   • East Texas judge throws out 168 patent cases in one fell swoop

   • Universities have turned over hundreds of patents to patent trolls

3. The Case Against Patents

   • How expiring patents are ushering in the next generation of 3D printing

   • All Our Patent Are Belong To You

Open Source

1. Open Source World

   • The new open-source economics

   • Freeing the Source - The Story of Mozilla

   • Leveraging American Ingenuity through Reusable and Open Source Software

2. Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software

   • What is free software?

   • Why you should use a BSD style license for your Open Source Project

3. A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

   • Corporations and OSS Do Not Mix

   • OpenSSL Heartbleed: Bloody nose for open-source bleeding hearts

4. Oracle v. Google

   • Google beats Oracle-Android makes "fair use" of Java APIs

   • Op-ed: Oracle attorney says Google's court victory might kill the GPL

   • The Google/Oracle decision was bad for copyright and bad for software

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

1. EFF - Digital Millennium Copyright Act

2. 10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web

3. The Tyranny of Copyright?

Reverse Engineering

1. Coders' Rights Project Reverse Engineering FAQ

   • Software, reverse engineering and the law

   • No, You Really Can't

2. Soon It'll Be OK To Tinker With Your Car's Software After All

   • We Can't Let John Deere Destroy the Very Idea of Ownership

   • Good News! Fixing Your Car Isn't Illegal Anymore!

   • It's Finally Legal To Hack Your Own Devices (Even Your Car)

3. The Copyright Rule We Need to Repeal If We Want to Preserve Our Cultural Heritage

   • "I Want to Know What Code Is Running Inside My Body"

Piracy

1. Music piracy is down but still very much in play

   • Goodbye to Piracy

   • Whatever Happened To The War On Piracy?

2. "DRM is Used to Lock in, Control and Spy on Users"

   • You Can't Destroy the Village to Save It: W3C vs DRM, Round Two

   • America's broken digital copyright law is about to be challenged in court

   • Analog: The Last Defense Against DRM

3. Kanye West is reportedly considering legal action against The Pirate Bay

   • Kanye West caught visiting Pirate Bay-possibly to download music software

4. YouTube Are Criminal Piracy Racketeers, Grammy Winner Says

   • RIAA still hates the DMCA, even as streaming revenues soar

   • YouTube's complaint system is pissing off its biggest users

   • For a few truly bad DMCA takedowns, YouTube offers to cover legal costs

Questions

Please write a response to one of the following questions:

1. From the readings, what exactly are patents? What are the ethical, moral, economic, or social reasons for granting patents?

   • In your opinion, should patents be granted at all? Are they really necessary or beneficial for society? Do the promote innovation or do they hinder it? Explain.

   • Additionally, should patents on software be granted or should patents be restricted to physical or more tangible artifacts? Explain.

   • Finally, is the existence of patent trolls evidence that the patent system is working or that the system is broken? Explain.

2. From the readings, what exactly is copyright? What are the ethical, moral, economic, or social reasons for granting copyrights?

   • When should an open source license be preferred over a proprietary license? Is open source software inherently better? If so, how do you explain things like HeartBleed and ShellShock?

   • Is the distinction between free software and open source meaningful? Between the GPL and BSD license, which one do you prefer? Which one is more free?

   • Finally, what do you make of the Oracle v Google case? Is the court correct in saying APIs are copyrightable? Is the court correct in ruling Google's use of Java's APIs as "fair use"? Explain.

3. From the readings, what exactly does the DMCA say about circumvention and reverse engineering? What limitations or restrictions does it impose on users of copyrighted artifacts?

   • Is it ethical for companies to use DRM schemes to protect their intellectual property? Conversely, is it ethical for end users to circumvent these DRM schemes? For instance, is it moral to rip a CD or DVD from the physical media to a portable audio or video file? Is it moral to remove the DRM from the files you get from iTunes or Audible?

   • Is it ethical to reverse engineer or build circumention tools that allow end users to fix, modify, or extend copyrighted work? For instance, should car or tractor owners be able to circumvent the protections on the software in their vehicles? Should phone owners have the right to unlock their phone? Should researchers and developers be allowed to probe and reverse engineer software for bugs and security flaws?

4. From the readings, what exactly the DMCA say about piracy? What provisions does it have for dealing with infringement? What exactly are the safe-harbor provisions?

   • Is it ethical or moral for users to download or share copyrighted material? What if they already own a version in another format? What if they were just "sampling" or "testing" the material?

   • Have you participated in the sharing of copyrighted material? If so, how did you justify your actions (or did you not care)? Moreover, why do you think so many people (regardless of whether or not you do) engage in this behavior even though it is against the law?

   • Does the emergence of streaming services such as Netflix or Spotify address the problem of piracy, or will are these services not sufficient? Is piracy a solvable problem? Is it a real problem?

Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the course, please provide your feedback at the end of your response.