The CopyKat - Part Deux

It's not often we report on the Pagan community, but the Wild Hunt tells us of concerns about Pagans violating copyright protections of Pagan books which have "resurfaced in a big way, with thousands of volumes being uploaded by the owner of one popular Facebook group". Authors and publisher’s agents who knew that no such permission had been granted have tried to get the files removed, and after several days those attempts appear to have been successful, to the disappointment of some group members. More here.

Rogers Communications wants the Supreme Court of Canada to reconsider a copyright ruling on pirated content that internet policy experts say could raise prices for law-abiding consumer. The Financial Post reports that the Toronto-based communications giant has filed for leave to appeal a Federal Court decision that stipulated internet service providers must turn over subscribers’ identities for free if copyright holders suspect them of copyright infringement. the Federal Court ruled internet providers could not recoup their costs because the fee could potentially make it too expensive for copyright holders to go after illegal downloaders. Instead, it suggested internet providers pass the costs along to all consumers – even those that do not infringe.

The Premier League in the United Kingdom is very very big business, with a large of the revenues provided by the commercial deal for match TV rights struck with Sky TV and BT.  and the FAPL will go to great lengths to protect those rights. With the start of the new Premier League season, the fight against illegal IPTV streams has stepped up, with ISPs being told to block streams of copyright content in real time - and this seems to have worked, with substantial disruption for viewers hoping to catch matches using these Kodi or web-based streams over the first weekend of the new season. TorrentFreak reports that several streams went dark within minutes of matches starting, leaving providers of the illegal streams to scramble to find new domains to host their content. With the recent closures of piracy-facilitating Kodi add-ons, it's looking like the days of being able to easily stream 'free' premium sports content might be coming to a close, although there are always people willing to use VPNs to evade the blocking abilities of the UK's ISPs. UPDATE - the Mirror says that 3 million watched the much hyped Mayweather / McGregor fight on at least 239 illegal streams. 
 
US President Donald Trump has instructed his trade envoy to examine China’s policies and practices concerning US intellectual property, a promise he made during the 2016 election campaign. The presidential memorandum signed tat the White House directs US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to “examine China’s policies, practices and actions” when it comes to transfer of US technology and “theft of American intellectual property” and use “all options” to protect US interests with Trump saying “We’re taking firm steps to make sure we protect the intellectual property of American companies and very importantly, of American workers” and “The theft of intellectual property by foreign countries costs our nation millions of jobs and billions and billions of dollars each and every year.”

The dispute between the major record companies and mixtape sharing app Spinrilla continues, with the former’s request for access to the latter’s source code high on the defendant’s current list of specific gripes. Interesting - the defs say this "The source code is the crown jewel of any software-based business, including Spinrilla. Even worse, plaintiffs want an ‘executable’ version of Spinrilla’s source code, which would literally enable them to replicate Spinrilla’s entire website. Any plaintiff could, in hours, delete all references to ‘Spinrilla’, add its own brand and launch Spinrilla’s exact website”.  More on CMU here. 

Songwriter groups in the USA and elsewhere have hit out at the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) over its submission to an official review of the moral rights of creators in the US. The songwriter organisations, including BASCA in the UK, say that the major record companies in the US are pursuing an anti-songwriter agenda on this point, while concurrently relying on vocal support from the songwriting community when it comes to lobbying for safe harbour reform. Both the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and the RIAA are against the introduction of statutory moral rights for artists. They believe that the current system works well and they fear that it’s impractical and expensive to credit all creators for their contributions. Stark hypocrisy from the record labels in the US? Or too big a task to manage? BASCA say "even though the US signed up to the Berne Convention in 1989 it chooses NOT to recognise moral rights, saying they are confusing.  There really isn’t anything confusing about crediting the original creator of a song folks!!  So understandably the writer organisations in the US get very excised, rightly so, about this ongoing scenario.  The US Copyright Office this year conducted another study into the issue with some very strong statements from creators and submissions by writer organisations in support of the US finally recognising moral rights.  However the RIAA in its wisdom decided to continue to reject this position .... Thus writers from across the US, Canada, the UK and Europe – organisations representing many tens of thousands of songwriters and composers of all genres – have come together in an unprecedented alliance to explain to the RIAA why this is wrong and damaging to the very people whose works the music industry is built on."

Anish Kapoor’s Sculpture Defaced by Anti-Semitic Tags Will Stay on Display

Anish Kapoor’s sculpture, “Dirty Corner,” which was installed last June in the gardens of the Palais de Versailles, has been vandalized again. It had already been vandalized in June
, when it was defaced by yellow paint.

This time, the long cone of steel, which the artist has presented in an interview as representing Queen Marie-Antoinette’s vagina, and the rocks surrounding it, have been covered by hateful and anti-Semitic phrases painted in white, such as: "La reine sacrifiée, deux fois outragée", "SS Sacrifice Sanglant", "Le deuxième VIOL de la Nation par l'activisme JUIF DEVIANT", "Le Christ est roi à Versailles" [“The sacrificed queen, twice outraged, " “Bloody SS Sacrifice", "The Second Rape of the Nation by JEWISH DEVIANT activism, " "Christ is king at Versailles."]

Anish Kapoor has decided the offensive inscriptions will not be deleted, as it would not erase the fact that such vandalism took place. He wrote on his Instagram account:

“The vandalised sculpture now looks like a graveyard, the stones are now gravestones marking the ruinous politics of fundamentalist bigotry. Dirty Corner allows this dirty politics to expose itself fully, in full view for all to see.”

He also wrote on his own web site:

“As the artist I have -for the second time- to ask myself what this act of violence means to my work. The sculpture will now carry the scars of this renewed attack. I will not allow this act of violence and intolerance to be erased. Dirty Corner will now be marked with hate and I will preserve these scars as a memory of this painful history. I am determined that Art will triumph.”

The artist had already written on his site, after the June attack:

“Should the paint that has been thrown all over the sculpture be removed? Or should the paint remain and be part of the work? Does the political violence of the vandalism make Dirty Corner “dirtier”? Does this dirty political act reflect the dirty politics of exclusion, marginalisation, elitism, racism, Islamophobia etc. The question I ask of myself is: can I the artist transform this crass act of political vandalism and violence into a public creative aesthetic act? Would this not then be the best revenge?”

Both of these statements are well worth being read in full.

Under French law, such vandalism is a crime, punishable by two years in jail and a 30 000 fine, and is also a tort. These tags also violated the integrity of the work, and thus violated Amish Kapoor’s moral rights over the sculpture, as protected by article L. 121-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code, under which the author has the perpetual right to respect for his work.  

Also, tagging anti-Semitic messages is a crime, as, under article 32 of the French Press law, religious defamation is a crime punishable by one year in jail and a 45 000 Euros fine. However, the artist’s decision not to delete these messages is not itself illegal, even though it perpetrates an illegal publication. Anish Kapoor , by stating that that the heinous messages must continue to be seen,  does not condone them, but wants the public to be able to see the face of hate, and thus to “transform this crass act of political vandalism and violence into a public creative aesthetic act.” As such, one can argue that tags have now become an integral part of the work, while its original significance has shifted, and that the artist has made a sovereign decision which must be respected lest to tramp over his moral right.

This decision, however, has not been met with unanimous approval. Jonathan Jones urged the artist to reconsider, arguing that “[h]e is giving bigots the oxygen of publicity and letting them ruin a beautiful work of art.” U.S. law considers generally that the answer to hate speech is more speech. Justice Holmes famously wrote in 1919 in his dissent in Abrams v. United States, in which Justice Brandeis concurred, that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market” and in 1974, Justice Powell wrote in Gertz v. Robert Welch, that “[u]nder the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.”

Dirty Corner will be shown in the Versailles garden until November 1, as originally planned. Let’s hope that, at this time, the perpetrators of this crime will have been arrested.

UPDATE: A French elected official from Versailles has just filed a complaint against Anish Kappor and Catherine Pégard, President of the Château de Versailles, for racial defamation, and public insults.

Image of Dirty Corner (not in Versailles though) is courtesy of Flickr user Silvia Sfligiotti under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license.