Month: March 2002

New MS Word Feature Checks Files for Copyright Infringement

Feb. 8, 2011
REDMOND–A bundle of feature updates and add-ons released Monday to subscribers of Microsoft’s popular word-processor service Word includes a new digital rights management, or “DRM”, feature designed to facilitate the use of copyrighted material in documents written using the service. “We’re very excited about the new [copyright advisor] tool,” explains Microsoft VP of Circumstantial Features Edmund Raunch. “For hundreds of years there’s been a lot of legal uncertainty surrounding the writing process. How would you know, for example, if what you were writing was infringing somebody else’s copyright unless you knew everything that had already been written. Well, we’ve tackled that uncertainty and just blown it away.”

Known informally as “the Mouse,” the feature involves a context-appropriate pop-up avatar in the likeness of Disney’s famous cartoon character. “Disney actually approached us concerning a branding alliance on the feature,” explains Raunch. “They’re very dedicated to the whole copyright and rights management issue and wanted to be actively involved in the development of the Advisor.”

The advisor works in much the same way as conventional spell-checking and grammar-checking features, monitoring documents on-the-fly as they are created and flagging any potential problems for the user. Once a potentially infringing passage is identified, the Advisor materializes and offers a number of options, including suggested, non-infringing re-phrasings, and an option to pursue automated negotiation for a licensing micro-payment to cover the use of the copyrighted material.

The advisor identifies potential infringement by checking documents against those stored in a centralized registry database maintained by the company. The registry also functions as a clearinghouse for licensing transactions involving registered materials. “We’re very happy to offer registration in the Advisor’s database free of charge to content creators,” notes Raunch. “We recover our costs by taking a small slice of each of the licensing transactions.”

During a feature demonstration, the advisor proved adept at identifying direct copying, noting almost instantly that “Call me Ishmael” was taken from Moby Dick, a book once, but no longer, in the public domain. In a cheerful voice, Mickey suggested alternatives, including “My name is Ishmael” and “Call me Ichabod,” and also offered to license the phrase for 8 cents in fewer than 50 copies of the document.

More impressive was the advisor’s ability to identify potential “derivative uses,” including creation of sequels and so-called “fan fiction.” With fewer tell-tale details than the words “Kirk,” “logic,” and “pointy ears,” Mickey was able to suggest that we seek license from Paramount for creation of a work derivative of its Star Trek franchise.

The feature is not without its critics, many of whom emphasize the Adivsor’s power to delete unlicensed language it deems to infringe another’s copyright. “This is putting too much power in the hands of Microsoft,” notes Information Without Borders director Janet Pullet. “The advisor enforces their view of copyright law, and that may be much more limiting of traditional fair use rights than even current law is.”

Responding to critics, Microsoft’s Raunch pointed to the company’s obligations under recent extensions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: “I’m not a lawyer, but from what I understand, word processors are considered ‘circumvention’ devices because you can type in any document you want and just save and copy it. Because of that, we’re obligated, by law, to enforce copyright to the extent technically feasible, and that’s just what the advisor does.

Court Protects ‘Attention Rights’ of Media Companies

October 8, 2006
WASHINGTON, DC–In a closely watched proceeding, DC District Court Judge Natalia Wimbley ruled Friday in favor of claims by a coalition of media companies to rights to the ‘attention’ of consumers. “This ruling is crucial to the continued vitality of American art and culture,” explains RIAA President-elect Richard Mound. “Recognition of attention rights goes a long way to guaranteeing that artists and musicians will have access to sustainable revenue streams.”

The case, known as ‘In Re the Sony Music catalog,’ involves a request by a number of major media companies and industry associations that the courts recognize a relatively new legal doctrine extending traditional copyright protection by granting copyright owners limited rights to demand that consumers watch or listen to their intellectual property. “Digital technologies have undermined the ability of simple copyright to secure reasonable pay for artists,” explains RIAA’s Mound. “Attention rights will restore the balance by giving the advertising model a firm legal foundation. With attention rights, companies will be able to guarantee advertisers a robust and predictable audience.”

Though Judge Wimbley stayed enforcement of her ruling pending appeal, the decision appears to grant companies an enforceable legal right to require consumers to pay a “reasonable share of attention relative to the property consumed.” In practice, record companies could, under the ruling, require that consumers listen to a minute of ads for every three minutes of music. Failure to listen to ads, and attempts to circumvent or delete advertising, would receive punishment commensurate with that ordered under the Copyright Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA.

Critics of the decision suggest that such ‘attention rights’ would be even less practical to enforce than copyright. “The weakness of copyright today is the weakness of rights-management technologies,” explains Professor Jimmy Sprig of Stanford Law School. “Do they really expect some sort of ‘attention-rights management’ technology to work any better? Do they really expect, practically, to outlaw the mute button as a circumvention measure?”

At least one company, though, has plans to market just such an ‘attention-rights management’ system. GE Surveillance Solutions, a subsidiary of the General Electric Corporation, demonstrated ‘Iful’ last month, a “passive, anonymous intellectual property consumption monitor” that, integrated into speakers and displays, uses infrared monitoring technologies to determine the “gaze-orientation” of consumers within its perimeter and to measure “consumer attention” through “progressive, comparative analyses of dynamic cranial heat topographies.”

“Most of the critics have been squawking about how impractical these ‘rights’ may be,” notes June Myrmidon, Executive Director of The Michigan Artists Collective. “But they seem to me to actually have more traction in the real world that copyright does. Copies are digital, ephemeral. They’re hard to keep track of; they float around in the ether. People’s heads don’t. I’d much rather bet my cash flow on my ability to monitor heads as a proxy for ‘attention’ than on my ability to monitor digital copies.”

A hearing before the Appellate Court has been scheduled for early next year.

Headless Reporter Continues Work

March 4, 2005
NEW YORK–ABC news magazine “20/20” reporter John Stossel, accidentally decapitated late last month while shooting a segment “debunking the myth of wind power,” returns to the air Wednesday in a special interview with 20/20 anchor Barbara Walters. “It’s really an amazing story,” explains Walters. “Most people wouldn’t even survive decapitation, let alone have the guts, the determination, to keep doing their jobs. It’s a real triumph of the human spirit.”

Injured during the filming of “Oil is Good Food,” a series of reports looking skeptically at the promise of “alternative energy,” Stossel was struck when the 73-foot fiberglass blade of a wind turbine began to rotate unexpectedly. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” recalls ABC cameraman Josh Eager. “John wanted to get a shot on this platform right in front of the blades there, just to dramatize that, you know, the wind isn’t always blowing enough to turn the things and make power when Wham! it just took his head right off. I never did see where it landed.”

Emergency personnel responding to the accident were astounded to find that, despite the loss of a significant amount of blood, Stossel appeared conscious and responsive. “It was really the quick thinking of the camera crew that saved him,” noted a paramedic on the scene. “Somebody had some training and knew how to tie off the major arteries. That’s what kept him alive.”

Doctors at a nearby Madison, Wisconsin hospital responded quickly to the unusual injury with a novel surgical procedure. “I had never before seen a survivor of decapitation, so we all had questions about how to proceed,” explains Dr. Margery Welppe, leader of the surgical team. “My training lead me to consider reattachment, but no head had been recovered. There also seemed no real possibility of a transplant of any sort, so we improvised, closing the vascular circuits and trying to close the neck as best we could.”

Medical explanation for Stossel’s survival remains vague and uncertain, though several experts point to the reporter’s “enteric nervous system” or “gut brain” as the possible source of his continued vitality.

The enteric system, a complex network of nerves located in and around the intestines of all mammals and long thought to control digestive processes, is known to make use of nearly all of the neuronal processes previously thought exclusive to the brain. “It’s true that the enteric system is much more complex that has been traditionally thought,” explains Professor Hillary Rind of the Harvard Medical School. “But, at least until now, nobody imagined it capable of assuming responsibility for the higher order functions of personality and rational thought.”

Talking to reporters through a vocoder linked to special “contact microphones” affixed to his neck, Stossel explained his reasons for returning to work so quickly after such a traumatic injury: “The wool is being pulled over our eyes by so-called ‘environmentalist’ do-gooders and I’m determined to put a stop to it. Did you know that wind power is millions of times more wasteful than oil or coal? Do you know how much wind just goes to waste without producing one volt? People talk all about the dangers of nuclear power, but what about the dangers of solar power? The sun is responsible for tens of thousands of cases of skin cancer each year. How much cancer do you think has been linked to nuclear power?”

Responding angrily to questions about his decision to forego use of a prosthetic head, Stossel noted that he felt no embarrassment about being headless and that colleagues at ABC agreed that he has done some of his best work in years since the accident: “Do I wish it hadn’t happened? Sure. Am I any less of a reporter just because I haven’t got a head? No way.”

MIT Scientist Discovers ‘Anti-Money’

Sept. 16, 2103
BOSTON–In a paper published recently in the journal Science, MIT Professor Marguerite Fury reports establishing experimentally the existence of ‘anti-money’, a bizarre economic phenomena linked by Professor Fury to a host of hypothesized ‘quantum economic’ processes underlying all matter. “Experimental confirmation of at least one of my theoretical predictions tells me I’m on to something,” notes Professor Fury. “This result will feed my thinking for some time.”

Described by Professor Fury as nearly indistinguishable, co-consuming packets of ‘quantum monies’, anti-money is not the absence of money, but its opposite. Professor Fury explains: “At the scale of everyday economic phenomena, we tend to think of money and debt as complementary opposites, but their opposition is, in fact, quite weak. They actually work in balance to permit the construction of large-scale economic entities. Anti-money is, in contrast, opposed to conventional money at a more fundamental level; whenever money and anti-money come in contact, the two are annihilated, leaving only a consumer residue.”

Because anti-money is annihilated in the presence of its opposite, observation of anti-money required Professor Fury to construct a monetary vacuum. This vacuum, entirely devoid of money, lacked also all traces of debt, because of debt’s close association with ‘positive monetary phenomena’ like interest accrual and periodic payments. And, because of the possible influence of economic processes attached to the observer, Professor Fury herself had to occupy the center of the financial vacuum.

“It’s really quite difficult to rid yourself of all vestiges of economic activity,” notes Fury. “I had to not only discharge all of my own assets and liabilities, but also to disclaim any social benefits my new economic status might entitle me too. Try convincing a government bureaucrat that you don’t want any benefits. It’s not easy. And, on top of that, I had to quit my job. I was almost up for tenure.”

After a number of days spent “wandering in the woods, naked and alone,” Professor Fury returned to the lab and activated a ‘program trading accelerator’ generating within moments billions of ‘wash sales’, or transactions in which offsetting assets are both bought and sold. Though wash sales have little or no positive economic consequence, assets moving at high transaction-velocity generate infrequent ‘friction collisions’ and ‘asset-inversions’ thought to throw off infinitesimal packets of monies and anti-monies.

Though indistinguishable from conventional money, anti-money would, Professor Fury predicted, be observable because of the consumer residue that would remain after the money and anti-money generated by her program trading met and was annihilated.