After the verdict, Thomas-Rasset told the Associated Press that the penalty was "kind of ridiculous," but also pointed out that she simply can't pay $2 million, so she is "not going to worry about it now."

As we pointed out in our earlier stories about this trial, the evidence clearly incriminated Thomas-Rasset, and the jury found that her conduct was willful. According to the Copyright Act, the jury could have awarded the music companies between $750 and $150,000 per song, but the jury, which clearly wasn't convinced by Thomas-Rasset's defense, came down in the middle at $80,000.

Could They Still Settle?

Ars Technica's Nate Anderson points out that RIAA spokesperson, Cara Duckworth, told reporters that the recording industry would still be willing to settle with Thomas-Rasset.

It seems like the RIAA is mostly interested in setting a precedent here, and if the two parties do eventually settle on a much smaller number (typically these cases ended in $5000 settlements), it surely wouldn't get the attention this current verdict received, leaving most of the public under the impression that a $80,000 fine per shared song is a real possibility.

Hard Drives, Best Buy, Kazaa, Terrastar, and Soft Drinks

There are considerable holes in Thomas' story, however. Among other things, she took her computer to Best Buy to get her hard drive replaced under warranty, exactly two weeks after MediaSentry informed her that she had been caught sharing these files. She then went ahead and brought this new drive in as evidence and swore under oath that the hard drive had been in the computer since 2004. According to a witness from Best Buy at today's trial, the drive must have been dead when Thomas took it in for repair, but it would be impossible to tell if she broke it accidentally (as she claims), or if this was done on purpose (breaking a hard drive is pretty easy, after all).

During the first day of her retrial, however, an expert witness who examined Thomas's computer also noted that an external hard drive had been hooked up to the computer, a fact that was new to the defense attorney.

Thomas' defense lawyers also produced a list of Thomas' purchases at Best Buy, but, as our friends at Ars Technica point out, if this was meant to show that Thomas was still buying a lot of music, this plan backfired, as she had bought a lot of soft drinks (seriously?), DVDs, and video games at Best Buy, but only one CD.

Thomas also generally used 'terrastar' as her handle, and the files on Kazaa were shared under that name. Given that Thomas' computer was password protected, what's the chance of somebody else using her login? In addition, Thomas also claims that she had never heard of Kazaa before this whole affair began.

It will be for the jury to decide if she is really guilty of these charges (judging from what we have seen, our best guess is that she will be found guilty), but the real problem isn't even really about her guilt or innocence. The real question here is if she really inflicted over $200,000 in damages by sharing 24 songs, as the music industry claims (or any damage at all). When the previous judge, Judge Michael Davis, Chief Justice of the Minnesota District Court, granted Thomas this retrial, he argued that the actual cost of the songs would be under $54 and implored Congress to address these damages, which he considered disproportionate, especially because Thomas didn't try to profit from her act.

The entertainment industry, as Mike Masnick points out on Techdirt, will celebrate this as a major victory in the fight against piracy, but in reality, shutting down the Pirate Bay will do little to deter filesharers and won't help the entertainment industry regain any lost market share or find a new business model.

It is also important to note that even though the Pirate Bay may be the most visible torrent-sharing site right now, others like Mininova host almost as many torrents.

The End of YouTube's Mashup Culture?

Most importantly, this move by YouTube, even though it makes perfect legal sense, might quickly put an end to the culture of remixes, mashups, and parodies on YouTube.

This new policy will also negatively affect a number of services that rely on YouTube for their audio content. Audiolizer, which we reviewed last month, for example, is, on the surface, a streaming music service, but actually gets its music from YouTube's vast catalog of music videos.

What About the Users?

In the end, this new policy will only alienate YouTube's users, while doing nothing to help the struggling music industry. It would make a lot more sense for the music industry to provide a blanket license to YouTube so that users could use copyrighted sounds tracks on their homemade videos, while the record labels (or the artists) could get a share of the advertising revenue.

The free version of Songbeat allows you to download up to 25 songs for free, but in order to download an unlimited number of songs, users will have to pay $29.99.

Features

Of course, there are already numerous application (online and offline) that allow users to search and play songs from various free music services. Some of the features that make Songbeat stand out are the ability to quickly import your downloaded songs to iTunes, Winamp, or the Windows Media Player, as well as its large directory of mixtapes. Songbeat also automatically downloads lyrics and album art with every song.

Money

Besides selling the full version of Songbeat, the company hopes to make money through the 'Songbeat Discover' service, which allows users to legally buy songs from Amazon's music store and concert tickets from Ticketmaster.

Legal?

There are some obvious legal questions about the service. Songbeat's founders Philip Eggersgluess and Marco Rydmann argue that Songbeat only creates a model for monetizing music that is already freely available online. However, it remains to be seen if the RIAA will agree with this line of reasoning.

In order to make an iPod work with an alternative software program - like gtkpod, Winamp, and Songbird, for example - developers need to understand a file called iTunesDB. To prevent people from writing to this file, Apple protects it with a checksum hash which has to be reverse-engineered. Usually that process only takes a couple of days.

With the latest iTunes update, Apple has once again changed the hash, meaning it needs to be reverse-engineered again. The developers doing so collaborate together and share their thoughts on iPodhash, an open-source project hosted on Bluwiki, a free web site that lets users create wiki pages.

Now Apple has asked for that site to come down, a request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says is out of line. Earlier this month, a lawyer from Apple's legal firm O'Melveny & Myers sent out a takedown notice to the site stating the content was illegal under the terms of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to the cease-and-desist email, the site is "disseminating information designed to circumvent Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system." It continued, "FairPlay is considered anti-circumvention technology under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such technology."

The EFF has jumped on this case, saying that Apple "doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on." According to EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann, this move is effectively bending the law in order to stifle free speech. "Apple is essentially saying here that people can't even talk about the mechanisms that Apple uses to lock in its music to the iTunes software," he said.

The EFF web site goes into more details as to why the EFF believes Apple to be in the wrong, listing the numerous reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site.

Where Does This Leave The Linux Community?

Since the Bluwiki site has complied with the takedown notice, the question is where does this leave the Linux community now? The main reason for the iPodhash project's existence is due to the fact that Apple does not provide a version of iTunes that runs on Linux. The project is an important community effort that helps Linux users create software programs that work with their iPods and iPhones.

Bluwiki's founder, Sam Odio, had said he was unsure if putting the site back online would be possible. Says Odio of his compliance with the takedown notice, "I regret having to do this. I may be able to put the site back online, but quite honestly it's unlikely because I can't afford a legal battle with Apple." Luckily for him, the EFF is now involved, so he will not have to worry with the legal fees.

Apple may only be protecting their very profitable iTunes business, but in this case, they're suggesting that the DMCA covers people merely talking about technical protection measures. If that's so, then as EFF says, "they've got a serious First Amendment problem."

You can follow this case's progress on the EFF's web site, Odio's blog, and on the iPodhash project's homepage.

Auto-Extracting Data

To use this new feature, you begin by uploading documents into Mumboe as usual, a process that involves nothing more than browsing for the file on your PC and uploading it to Mumboe. The OCR software in the system will scan the document's text and make the text searchable. Once complete, you can then select the new "Auto Extract" button which lets you automatically extract the key details from the document such as the parties involved and the agreement term. Those details are displayed for your reference along with the exact place in the document where they were found. You'll also be able to see an excerpt of the text contains those key words and phrases. You can choose to save the data as is or edit it as you see fit. If the system extracts terms you don't need to track, you can simply discard those items and keep the rest. When you're finished, just click "Done."

Pulling out the details:

Why This Matters

For consumers and every one else outside the target audience, Mumboe and other similar types of applications seem dry and boring. But for those in need of better tools, mainly those working in the legal profession, they will see this auto-extract capability as one sexy new feature. Why? Because according to the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM), poorly managed contracts result in over $153 billion in missed savings and revenue per year. Give our current economic conditions, those numbers cannot be ignored.

The only hurdle Mumboe has to overcome is the lawyers' (a typically conservative bunch) fear of moving to an online application. Their, in our opinion, misguided fear and mistrust of any sort of cloud app keeps them doing business the old-fashioned way - reading through pages and pages of documents themselves instead of enlisting the aid of some "new fangled" system to help them out. But for those who do take the leap, their efficiency will increase dramatically. If there's any occupation that understands the concept of "time is money," law would be it, and that's why Mumboe has a shot.

How To Join the Beta

The Mumboe auto-extract features are in private beta at the moment, but you can sign up to join here: https://app.mumboe.com/registration/beta_promotion_index. Mumboe will give out invites to RWW readers exclusively.

More About Mumboe:

]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/law_20_news_mumboe_uses_semantics_to_pull_data_from_contracts.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/law_20_news_mumboe_uses_semantics_to_pull_data_from_contracts.php Enterprise Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:40:00 -0800 Sarah Perez If I apply some wacky new type of license to my creative work, is it going to hold up in court if a conflict comes down to that?

According to some participants, a key US court yesterday made a decision in favor of free, open intellectual property licenses like Creative Commons, though the details of the decision are complicated.

The Case

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday ruled (see court document below) that a license called Artistic License, similar to Creative Commons, was violated in a dust up between model engineer software developers. One developer created software that could be used to program the tiny trains, put it under Artistic License, and then alleged that another developer took parts of his work, incorporated it into commercial software and didn't give any credit to the original author.

At this point there appears to be no question that this did happen, the only question was whether it matters - whether the Artistic License is legally valid. The court appears to have ruled that it is.

As super-lawyer Larry Lessig puts it: "In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer."

While the water 'aint so bad for most copyright infringers, many believe that infringement is of far more consequence when it's done against "one of us," someone who has embraced an alternative, looser version of copyright.

Lack of Clarity

Put a panel of judges in a room and ask them if the sky is blue and you'll likely get an answer like "we decline to disagree with some points brought up by previous parties that have engaged with the question." So it's hard to know for sure how solid this ruling really is right now. Lessig, and others who can hardly be called disinterested, say it's a huge win.

Others, like a particularly well spoken commenter on BoingBoing and Mike Masnick, probably the most no-b.s. blogger in tech, point out that there are some wrinkles in the situation that deserve recognition before we start celebrating.

Why This is Important

Standard copyright in the US and increasingly around the world is by default a requirement that you get explicit permission to use a creative work. This slows things down a lot. Next generation intellectual property frameworks, like Creative Commons, allow creators to communicate their terms for reuse ahead of time, so that subsequent creation can build on their work immediately.

Many creators, though, need assurances that their conditions will be respected before they are willing to open their work to any limited reuse without explicit permission.

In 2006, an Amsterdam court ruled in favor of former MTV star and now Venture Capital stockpiling podcast maven Adam Curry in a case alleging that a tabloid used some of his Creative Commons licensed photos from Flickr without his permission. While that ruling was interesting and important, this week's related judgment in a key US court about software licensing is potentially of much greater signifigance.

If this decision ends up being as clear as Lessig and friends contend, and Larry Lessig is a pretty stand up guy, then the case of the model engineer software should provide solid ground for even more creators to feel safe offering their work under licenses that facilitate limited but more frictionless reuse and sharing.

New technologies require new legal frameworks and in an era so marked by regressive actions around intellectual property in film and music, it's refreshing to see some good news for once.

Want a good way to celebrate? Today could be a good day to visit the privacy and permissions tab in your Flickr account and change the default setting for new photos uploaded to a Creative Commons one. Come on in, the water's fine.