Law and Information

Cedric Manara points us to an evaluation report (I was only able to open/download it by using Internet Explorer) on the EU Database Directive published by the DG Internal Maket and Services. The evaluation focuses on whether the introduction of this right led to an increase in the European database industry’s rate of growth and in database production. According to the press release, it was conducted on the basis of an online survey addressed to the European database industry and the Gale Directory of Databases as the largest existing database directory that contains statistics indicating the growth of the global database industry since the 1970s.

The most interesting and important part of the report (p. 5) reads as follows:

These findings, I believe, have also the potential to shape the U.S. debate on the question of database protection. For conclusions within the EU framework see pp. 5-6 of the report.

Mike McGuire and Derek Slater have released an interesting Gartner/Berkman Center report entitled “Consumer Taste Sharing Is Driving the Online Music Business and Democratizing Culture” that analyzes the extent of peoples’ use of consumer-to-consumer recommendation tools such as playlists. Here’s their prediction:

Check also Derek Slater’s playlist on this topic, and his comments here.

Our colleagues at WilmerHale have created a great website with resources from the 2005 Harvard Law School Conference on Intellectual Property Law. The website includes electronic documentation of the information covered at the conference, including PowerPoint presentations, audio files of the panels and links to speaker biographies. (I had the honor to participate in the panel on developments in software protection in the EU.)

Late, very late, but hopefully not too late — finally online available some thoughts on Grokster by Harvard Law School Clinical Professor John G. Palfrey, Jr. and me. It’s a piece written for a non-U.S., non-IP-law-audience with a general interest in the topic. Here’s the abstract:

I have the great pleasure to attend the Global Voices 2005 London Summit led by my Berkman colleagues and friends Rebecca McKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman. It’s fantastic what the Global Voices initiative has achieved. Currently, more than 300,000 people per month are visiting the site and read articles written by hundreds of users from around the world, and the growth rate is impressive. Also, GV increasingly attracts the attention from traditional media such as CNN, BBC, etc. Some statistics are posted here.

I can’t wait to learn more about the future editorial strategy of GV. I’m increasingly fascinated by the emergence of innovative editorial functionalities and their implications for cyberspace as a “message space” (sensu Charlie Nesson.)

Join us online!

Ian Brown points to a communication by the European Commission, announcing a “recasting” (see p. 7 for a definition) of EU Copyright Law as part of the Lisbon program aimed at regulatory simplification. According to the UK Patent Office’s website, the review will focus on levies applied to equipment and media used for private copying, term of protection for sound recordings, and includes a review of co-written and musical works.

Check it out – Top10 Sources has launched today. It’s fascinating, it’s promising, and it’s also somewhat surprising since it reintroduces editors in the old sense in the age of decentralized information production. Here’s the brief description from the homepage:

I’m very interested in the further development of Top 10 Sources, esp. against the backdrop of my information quality research. In any event, congrats – as well as good luck – to my friend John Palfrey and his team, including Wendy.

Alan Davidson, Washington Policy Counsel and head of Google’s new Washington DC government affairs office, made several interesting remarks in his panel statement. Among them: He identified the following two areas that are of special concern to search engine providers:

(1) Conceptual shift in speech regulation

• Old approach (offline media): focused on publishers, readers
• New & emerging generation of speech regulation: focus on deliverers – intermediaries are supposed to police the networks. Examples where this approach is currently up for discussion in D.C.: access to pharmaceutical products, blocking of gaming websites
• Assessment: It’s not a good idea to target intermediaries: Due process, procedural problem: intermediary, e.g., can’t tell whether or not a particular site featuring copyrighted content is a fair use or not; by going after the intermediary you take the publisher out of equation, can’t go to courts to argue the case
• Misguided, because search engines are only in the business of indexing existing content; they’re not editors (can’t be, given the scale.)

(2) Government access to information

• Increasing pressures to provide personalized information (search history, etc.) to third parties
• Best privacy policy doesn’t help if government wants information for national security reasons; standards really low; plus: search engines not allowed to inform users that info has been passed on to third parties.

Here are some keywords of Ed Felten’s presentation here at Yale’s search conference:

• Talks about what search is
• Search is broader than we think that it is
• Three steps, processes or elements: (1) observe, (2) analyze/learn/, (3) serve users
• Observation of information, either crawled in the web or the university library, real world
• Put information in a DB, so that it’s available in electronic/digital form. Analyze, index, learn, model that information; put some sort of value on top of it
• Index, model, … built from it allows you to serve users, answering queries, answer questions
• Broad definition, it’s not only search engines such as Yahoo, it also includes Google print, fixture sites (e.g. baseball statistics), attributes of P2P file sharing systems; also applies to consumer reporting organizations, e.g. choicepoint
• Interesting issue among others: Question whether search is internal or external to the world it is studying. Eg. Ebay has searchable search engine inside for objects/auctions. Component that is part of the service they provide. Bidder’s Edge tried to build external search; eBay wasn’t happy. Other interesting case: Grokster, e.g., has/had internal search engine. BitTorrent didn’t provide a search engine, provided only transfer and got significant legal advantage.
• Other interesting aspect: analyzing and learning brings the value, e.g. Google’s PageRank is the value added. Analysis step is where the heavy thinking happens and value is created. Interesting, b/c legal challenges have not challenged analysis element, but are challenge to crawling = observation stuff (e.g. eBay v. Bidder’s Edge).
• Decentralization and P2P design. Complex issue. If analyzing and learning is key, but “observation” element of the search process is the target of law, it’s likely that we try to decentralize the observation part.
• In sum, search is broad, we’re very early in development of this technology.

Update: More on the other panels here.

Lot’s of good stuff in the INDICARE Monitor’s November edition. Among the interesting articles a timely piece on intrusive DRM by Philipp Bohn, a report on the European Commission’s recommendation on cross border licensing by Margreet Groenenboom, and Bill Rosenblatt’s article on rights management and the revolution in e-publishing. Also check out the INDICARE blog, esp. Margreet’s recent post. She draws our attention to a speech by Commissioner McCreevy, who is quoted with the following words: