12 for 2012: No.12: Dmitry Merezhovsky (1865-1941)

During each of the twelve days of Christmas, the 1709 Blog is bringing readers some information concerning an author, composer, artist or creator who died in 1941 and whose works fall into the public domain in 2012 in countries which operate a "life plus seventy years" term for copyright in authors' works. Today's twelfth and final post features a founder of the Russian symbolist movement, writer, poet and critic Dmitry Merezhovsky.

Dmitry Merezhovsky was born in St Petersburg into a large, wealthy and well-connected family. While studying at the St Petersburg Third Classic Gymnasium, an elite grammar school, the thirteen-year-old Merezhovsky began writing poetry and developed a passion for the works of Pushkin and Molière. Interest in the latter nearly led to Merezhovsky’s expulsion from the school, but his father’s connections protected him. Merezhovsky’s first poems were published while the author was still in his teens, and their popularity brought him fame before he even started university. By the late 1880s Merezhovsky had settled down and married the poet Zinaida Gippius, and began moving on to literary pastures new. He soon made his successful début in the field of literary criticism, and developed a whole new genre of philosophical essay as a form of critical thesis. Merezhovsky’s ideas were often regarded as scandalous by the contemporary literary establishment, and he became known as a ‘rising star’ in the growing scene of experimental literature.

Merezhovsky co-founded the Russian Symbolist movement, and continued to publish successful novels, poems, plays and essays; Merezhovsky was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature on nine separate occasions, although he never received the award. Merezhovsky and his wife frequently found themselves at the centre of controversy, and in 1919 they were forced to flee their country to live in exile after speaking out against the October Revolution. As his political activism increased, Merezhovsky turned away from writing prose and focused on his unique form of religious-philosophical essay, in free and experimental style, but still under the title of ‘novel’. His works during the 1920s focused on different ways in which humankind could achieve salvation. In the 1930s he wrote about of a doomed Europe, stuck between two ‘explosive’ stores: Communisim and Fascism. Merezhovksy may have been anti-Communist, but he remained a Russian nationalist until the end. His years in exile were spent mostly in Germany and then later in Paris, where he died from a brain haemorrhage in 1941.

This series has been authored by Miriam Levenson, whom the 1709 Blog gives its grateful thanks.

Spain implements web blocking law

The BBC reports that the Spanish Parliament has implemented the somewhat controversial Sinde law. The legislation, which had already been enacted into law, will make it easier for content owners to target copyright infringing websites from March 2012 onwards. The draft legislation was initially criticised for being ‘US influenced’ and, like ‘three strikes’ Law Hadopi in France, because it lacked any provision for scrutiny by the courts. The latter point has been rectified and the legislation creates a government body with powers to force internet service providers to block sites. The Intellectual Property Commission will decide whether it wants to take action against an infringing site or the ISPs and websites providing links to infringing content and the case will then be passed to a judge to rule on whether the site should be shut down, this judicial process being completed within seventy two hours.

A report commissioned by a coalition of Spain's rights-holders suggested that piracy in Spain cost legal content rights owners $6.8 billion in the first half of 2010 alone, claiming 97.8% of all music consumption and 77% of movie downloads in Spain were illegal. Illegal downloading in Spain constitutes around 45% of internet use according to market-research firm Nielsen, compared to 23% average in the top five EU markets.

The law Sinde, named after the former Spanish culture minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde and introduced by the previous Government, attempts to introduce new regulations which will reduce levels of illegal file-sharing and would offer a fast-track system through which content owners can force commercial websites that exist primarily to assist others in their illegal file-sharing offline – potentially within ten days of a complaint being made.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria who announced the full passage of the law a year after it was first passed, said that the aim of the law was "to safeguard intellectual property, boost our culture industries and protect the rights of owners, creators and others in the face of the lucrative plundering of illegal downloading sites."

In the UK, the three strikes provisions of the Digital Economy Act remain dormant although Mr Justice Arnold’s decision in Newzbin 2 has proved effective in forcing BT and encouraging other ISPS to block access to infringing sites. In France the aforementioned law Hadopi has resulted in some 18 million (yes, really!) IP addresses being monitored in first nine months and Hadopi, the body set up to administer the policy, said in mid-2011 that it had sent a total of 470,000 first warnings by email, with 20,000 users receiving a second warning. That said, only 10 people who appeared to ignore the two warnings were asked to come and explain their actions to the agency.

Opponents have promised to flood the Spanish courts with appeals over what they say is an unconstitutional attack on freedom of expression and are also promoting a boycott of artists who have supported the anti-piracy law and distributing legal instructions to avoid prosecution.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16391727

Cognitive screening, copyleft and consistency as between IP rights

"Copyright and Open Access at the Bedside" is a fascinating piece by John C. Newman and Robin Feldman, which you can find on the website of the New England Journal of Medicine here. The issue is succinctly stated in its opening paragraphs, below (omitting footnotes):

"For three decades after its publication, in 1975, the Mini–Mental State Examination (MMSE) was widely distributed in textbooks, pocket guides, and Web sites and memorized by countless residents and medical students. The simplicity and ubiquity of this 30-item screening test — covering such functions as arithmetic, memory, language comprehension, visuospatial skills, and orientation — made it the de facto standard for cognitive screening. Yet all that time, it was under copyright protection. In 2000, its authors, Marshal Folstein, Susan Folstein, and Paul McHugh, began taking steps to enforce their rights, first transferring the copyright to MiniMental, a corporation the Folsteins founded, and then in 2001 granting a worldwide exclusive license to Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR) to publish, distribute, and manage all intellectual property rights. A licensed version of the MMSE can now be purchased from PAR for $1.23 per test. The MMSE form is gradually disappearing from textbooks, Web sites, and clinical tool kits. 

Clinicians' response to this “lockdown” has been muted. A few commentators have expressed concern about continuing to use a now-proprietary tool in training or about implications for the developing world, echoing debates about patented pharmaceuticals. In our experience, many clinicians are either unaware of the MMSE's copyright restrictions or simply ignore them, despite the risk of copyright infringement".

Andrew Robinson, who has kindly provided this link, explains that a free alternative has since been shut down because of an allegedly dubious copyright claim and notes how interesting it is that this article puts copyleft into a new context, that of medical copyright -- and that such a well respected journal would side with the open source movement without much resistance or debate. As the authors conclude (again with footnotes omitted):

"We suggest that authors of widely used clinical tools provide explicit permissive licensing, ideally with a form of copyleft. Any new tool developed with public funds should be required to use a copyleft or similar license to guarantee the freedom to distribute and improve it, similar to the requirement for open-access publication of research funded by the National Institutes of Health. The solution can be as simple as placing a copy of the tool on the authors' Web site, with a statement naming or linking to the license. Clinicians and researchers would be free to use, copy, and improve the tool; improvements would have to offer a similar copyleft license, perpetuating the benefits. Yet authors would maintain ownership and copyright of their tool and could profit by licensing it for a fee to commercial users or publishers who wished to include it in a non-copyleft work.

The restrictions on the MMSE's use present clinicians with difficult choices: increase practice costs and complexity, risk copyright infringement, or sacrifice 30 years of practical experience and validation to adopt new cognitive assessment tools. By embracing the principles of copyleft licensing, we can avoid such setbacks and build a more open future of continually improving patient care".

This blogger has a particular interest in the IP dimensions to screening tests of this nature, having had to advise an author-clinician in the past on the relative rights and entitlements as between the author, his employing medical authority and a funding body, back in the days when the word "copyleft" was never heard on his side of the Atlantic. It seems to him that the use of medical, therapeutic and diagnostic creations should be treated consistently as  between patents and copyright, since the same public interest in access to them is manifest without regard to the nature of the IP right concerned, and that more attention should be given to a whole range of options: not just copyleft but compulsory licences and licences of right where appropriate. It also seems sensible to distinguish between the results of research and development which are publicly-funded research and results which are not.

12 for 2012: No.11: Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941)

During each of the twelve days of Christmas, the 1709 Blog is bringing readers some information concerning an author, composer, artist or creator who died in 1941 and whose works fall into the public domain in 2012 in countries which operate a "life plus seventy years" term for copyright in authors' works. Today we feature a French author whose creation was a Gallic rival to Sherlock Holmes.

French writer Maurice Leblanc had his literary breakthrough in 1905, when his creation ‘Arsène Lupin’ first made a published appearance. In previous years, Leblanc’s short stories and novels had been admired by critics but had failed to win the hearts of the public. Lupin, the gentleman-thief turned detective, brought Leblanc surprise fame and success. Reviews and sales of the Lupin books were so good that from 1905 onwards Leblanc dedicated almost the entirety of his career to producing more Lupin creations. By the end of his life, Leblanc had produced no fewer than twenty-one novels or short-story collections about Lupin. From 1908 Lupin became a popular stage personality when Leblanc’s stories were dramatized, and in 1912 Leblanc became part of the Légion d’Honneur in recognition of his services to literature.

Despite the success he met in the genre of crime fiction, Leblanc at times resented Lupin’s success. The writer made repeated efforts to create other characters, but inevitably ended up merging them with Lupin. For this reason, parallels have been drawn between Leblanc and his English counterpart Conan Doyle, who met with similar experiences when he created Sherlock Holmes some years earlier. Other works produced by Leblanc in the ‘Lupin years’ were the science fiction novels Les Trois Yeux (1919) and Le formidable evènement (1920).

This series has been authored by Miriam Levenson, whom the 1709 Blog gives its grateful thanks.

Summertime in Paris

Summer seems not much more than a distant memory on such a dreary January day, but it appears that preparations are already well underway for this year's summer schools. Our younger readers may be interested to learn that CERDI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche en Droit de l'Immatériel), the IP centre of the universities Paris-Sud and Paris-Sorbonne, is hosting an 'International Summer Seminar on Copyright' from 9 to 13 July 2012.

The seminar is directed at young copyright scholars and professionals (young means under 40 in the world of copyright). From the information available at this stage it appears that the CERDI summer seminar will be held partly in English and partly in French, and a working knowledge of either language would seem to be sufficient. In total, there will be eight half-days of seminars, two half-days of sight-seeing, and a closing conference followed by a 'festive meal'. There is a fee of 250 EUR for meals and accommodation, but otherwise the seminar is free.

If this has got you interested, further information is available on the CERDI website here. You can 'pre-subscribe' here, i.e. register your interest and pick the topics of the seminars in which you would like to participate (you must choose at least ten including three on which you would be prepared to give a short presentation). You can also suggest additional topics.

Summertime here
Paris here and here

12 for 2012: No.10: Frank Bridge (1879-1941)

During each of the twelve days of Christmas, the 1709 Blog is bringing readers some information concerning an author, composer, artist or creator who died in 1941 and whose works fall into the public domain in 2012 in countries which operate a "life plus seventy years" term for copyright in authors' works. Today we feature an undeservedly little-known composer of some idyllic music -- and also some fairly desolate sounds.

Following his studies at the Royal College of Music under the notoriously harsh tutelage of Charles Stanford, Frank Bridge embarked on his musical career as a violinist, conductor and composer. Bridge soon exchanged his violin for a viola and made a name for himself as a high-profile chamber musician. This did not slow him down from progressing along the conducting path, becoming Henry Wood’s preferred deputy on many occasions; neither did it prevent him from producing a number of popular compositions.

Bridge’s early compositional style showed the influence of Ravel, Debussy and Scriabin, and his chamber music works were highly regarded. However, after the First World War Bridge’s creative style underwent a radical change. The ‘utter despair’ he felt at the tragedy and inhumanity of the war was translated into desolate, pessimistic and uncomfortable musical sounds. He developed his characteristic ‘Bridge chord’, which is the combined clash of C minor and D major chords, and which features in a number of his post-war works. This change in musical style did not do his popularity any favours; his music became more inaccessible and far less charming. Although Bridge’s more radical music did meet with better reception in America, Bridge remained in demand in his native England as a conductor, performer and teacher of a great many pupils – most notably Benjamin Britten, whose 1937 ‘Variations on a theme by Frank Bridge’ was dedicated to his teacher. Some of Bridge’s most famous works include ‘Moto perpetuo’ for violin (1900), and his orchestral suite ‘The Sea’ (1911).

This series has been authored by Miriam Levenson, whom the 1709 Blog gives its grateful thanks.

12 for 2012: No.9: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

During each of the twelve days of Christmas, the 1709 Blog is bringing readers some information concerning an author, composer, artist or creator who died in 1941 and whose works fall into the public domain in 2012 in countries which operate a "life plus seventy years" term for copyright in authors' works. Today the series features a giant of Indian culture and thought. 

For the first fifty-one years of his life, Rabindranath Tagore was relatively unknown. Apart from a failed attempt to study law in England, Tagore remained in his hometown of Calcutta and enjoyed limited success as a writer, philosopher and educator. His fortune changed in 1912 after travelling to England with his son. To fill time on the long journey, Tagore began translating his latest collection of poems, Gitanjali, into English. Upon arrival his only friend in England, the artist Sir William Rothenstein, was immensely impressed with these poems and showed them to his friend, the distinguished poet W.B. Yeats. Within a year Tagore had become an international literary sensation, and in 1913 went down in history as the first non-Westerner to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.

Tagore devoted a great deal of his energies to promoting his ideals of harmony between different cultures, and in 1915 was knighted by King George V. Although Tagore tried to stay out of politics he later renounced this knighthood after the Amritsar massacre of 400 Indian demonstrators by British troops in 1919. The variety of Tagore’s creative output is a testament to the many interests and ideals to which he was devoted. In Bangladesh as well as India, Tagore is famous for having written the country’s national anthem; he also produced over a thousand poems, eight volumes of short stories, almost two dozen plays, eight novels, and countless books and essays on philosophy, religion, education and social issues. Tagore’s output of songs, exceeding two thousand in number, remain immensely popular in Bengal.

The legacy of Tagore does not rest exclusively in the quality and quantity of his published works; the university he founded in 1918 (Visva Bharati, in East Bengal) aims to combine the finest teachings of Hindu culture with Western ideals, and was declared ‘an institute of national importance’ by the Indian Parliament after Tagore’s death in 1941.

This series has been authored by Miriam Levenson, whom the 1709 Blog gives its grateful thanks.

12 for 2012: No.8: "Jelly Roll" Morton (1885-1941)

During each of the twelve days of Christmas, the 1709 Blog is bringing readers some information concerning an author, composer, artist or creator who died in 1941 and whose works fall into the public domain in 2012 in countries which operate a "life plus seventy years" term for copyright in authors' works. Today we feature a colourful personality within the field of jazz -- the celebrated pianist and composer "Jelly Roll" Morton.

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (‘Jelly Roll Morton’) was famous both for his musical talents and for his rather overconfident nature. His self-promotion as the ‘inventor of jazz’ has been disparaged by many a musician and critic, yet his considerable accomplishments speak for themselves. Morton’s musical career began at the age of fourteen, when he began working as a piano player in a brothel. His nickname ‘Jelly Roll’, which at the time had sexual connotations, was acquired during this period. He was kicked out of the home he shared with his grandmother when she discovered how he was earning his living. Still in his teens, Jelly Roll became a travelling musician, composing and performing all over the American South.

'Jelly Roll Blues' (1915) became the first published jazz composition, and Morton’s famous jazz arrangements are unique in their ability to capture the essence of improvisation on paper. Other well-known works by Morton are 'Black Bottom Stomp' (1926), 'Wolverine Blues' (1927), and 'I thought I heard Buddy Bolden Say'. Morton’s piano style was influenced by ragtime and boogie-woogie, and his music often had a wild, improvisatory feel. Whether or not the invention of jazz can be attributed to Jelly Roll, he was undoubtedly a pioneer figure in the development of this genre, and the creator of some of today’s greatest jazz arrangements.

This series has been authored by Miriam Levenson, whom the 1709 Blog gives its grateful thanks.