Goat stories and globalised IP

Because I've been writing and thinking a lot about historical fiction in medieval Bohemia, YouTube recommended to me the “Old Goat Stories”, animated movies based on central-European fairy tales. At a point in the second one, I imagined myself as a writer inserting the line: “I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids, and your talking goat!”

That got me thinking: can you copyright a catch phrase? At what point should intellectual property which becomes successfully pervasive enough to become memes or tropes, stop being protected?

The hair to split in this is that short phrases and brand identifiers are protected by trademarks, not simply copyright. That's a surprisingly important difference, because copyright is automatic with publication, but trademarks have to effectively be bought from regulators. It's similar to buying a radio frequency, or a licence to sell alcohol.

Furthermore, they are only valid for specific purposes. Returning to the original research question, I looked up the U.S. Trademarks & Patents Office and wrote some in. That's how I learned anyone can say “yabba dabba doo” on the radio or internet – because the original source material is no longer in production, so its trademark has lapsed – but not print it on a T-shirt, because the trademark on the apparel is ongoing. Similarly, ripping off “what's up doc” or “wassally wabbit” without attribution will still cause trouble for you.

Secondly, copyright and trademarks operate for different purposes. Copyright is meant to spread original ideas around, as long as others recognise whose original idea it was. [Academia has this at its foundation.] The only time you're allowed to get aggressive is when your work is copied instead of being reproduced. Technically speaking then, Warner Music can demand payment from any children's party who sings “happy birthday” without acknowledging that they legally own the song. Similarly, anyone who writes a series of books about Harry the Halfling travelling with a wizard across a war-torn hellscape populated by orcs to destroy an ancient artefact will probably find themselves in trouble with the Tolkien estate [at least until 2043, when the rights will expire, and the content will enter the “public domain”].

However, we're still free to write about “halflings” and “orcs”, and spell “dwarves” instead of “dwarfs”, even though these are all things which Tolkien invented. This is because he didn't apply them as trademarks, which would give a legal monopoly not only on copying but any reproductions. Any easily recognisable symbol or slogan you're aware of from the 20^th century is likely a trademark.

Demonstrating the relationship of intellectual property and legal protections leads to an investigation of some of the biggest brands commonly around. Robin Hood has been around for so long that, even if we could determine the original author, it is definitely public domain. Exactly because it is a story and character so widely recognisable, D.C.'s Green Arrow and Marvel's Hawkeye used it as the base for their own, newer products, which are now protected by commercial law. The same goes for the various animated and cinematic portrayals of Robin Hood and the merry men, have paradoxically become products protected by commercial law. Especially, anyone who tries to reimagine the story, viewing it from a different angle, could argue that it is an innovation of the author, and therefore protected.

Another successful example demonstrates how it can't be assumed that that original author wants people to add to work they've already done, to preserve their money-making rights. Tolkien's “swords and sorcery” genre of “fantasy adventure” led to Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). (Which seriously, even if you've never played before, I bet you've heard of it, right?) Since their content isn't original, all they have left are the rules systems and game mechanics, and they've been open sourced for 20 years. In the year 2000, the owners of the brand released an open game licence (OGL), allowing others – A. K. A. Third-party providers; 3PPs – to write and distribute material to be used for their game. Without this licence, the owners had monopoly distribution rights, which they could enforce under penalty of law. Instead, recognising the wide variety of “home-brewed” material that was already being used by their customers – including tweaks to their core rule systems – the publishers allowed that content to be distributed widely, provided that the new authors “clearly indicate which portions of the work that you are distributing are open game content”, according to OGL s8. Some of this experimentation they later adopted into new, official rules and mechanics.

Another consequence of throwing open the rights to their rules system was allowing more competition. Some of their staff left and started a rival game publishing company (Paizo), utilising the content covered in OGL, and taking it in a different direction. Normally that is exactly what you don't want from your IP regime.

Doing another assignment, I was also impressed to find that Microsoft's online pictures included coins and banknotes from Australia, and Ethiopia. Putting them in a document includes a text box with the licencing information. Specifically, "This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA". This is a creative commons protocol, meaning that anyone can use the image freely, anywhere, including for commercial purposes. 

Other specific terms of the licence say, "indicate any changes made. Any sharing of transformed material must be distributed under the same licence as the original". After all, the point of creative commons is to encourage widespread use of their content by removing any barriers. For the images of currency, its purpose is similarly to be distributed for indiscriminate use, which raises the question that if everyone should have it, should it have any IP protection?

Yes, in fact. When Australia changed from pounds to dollars in 1966, we originally had $1 notes. With the best of intentions at the time, they had aboriginal art printed on one side. The artist, David Malangi, recognised the work was his, and successfully sued the Reserve Bank, which admitted they had not asked for permission to use his designs.

When it comes to digital publications, IP protections are intertwined with other concepts and technological capabilities. Metadata is a big one, since it can effectively determine who gets credit, and who gets paid. Digital rights management software [DRM] is another emergent battleground, since it combines questions of ownership and distribution with access. It can therefore be seen that copyright and other considerations of disseminating intellectual property on the internet are a rabbit hole that requires professional understanding to navigate.

Anglotech

After first reading about geocaches, it seems to be a nearly inevitable application of data storage and communication technology. A network of thirty satellites in near Earth orbit (Neo) form the global positioning system (GPS). Originally intended for precise military navigation and intelligence gathering,it quickly found its use in civilian/commercial navigation. Now everyone with a mobile internet device can have their location pinpointed. This data is then collected by the owners and licensees of the technology being used, including for government intelligence gathering.

Specific data can be stored - cached - at a particular point, which is visible on a dedicated map. A user with the geocaching app. can race around and find as many as they like, and compare what they've found with other users internationally.

My first thought about this technological development is that it follows a historical precedent (at least for Anglo's): new capabilities are quickly, if not immediately militarised, and tightly controlled by government. The first aeronautical factories in Britain for example were state owned and operated, to supply what would become the royal air force. Radio and telephones were first deployed in Australia for army and navy use, with everyone else making do with the public post offices or commercial telegraph network. More recently, the internet was intended for data sharing by American defence researchers; now the GPS.

The second phase traditionally is that public services begin offering the latest information capabilities and communication technology to their communities. Within living memory, country townspeople would visit their local post office or library to make a phone call. My father was very proud at the time to have gone to the public library in Tamworth, and used a photocopier for a school project in the 60s. Equivalent for me was when the internet was first publicised in the mid 90s, when my brothers and I took most of a day out to visit the State Library in South Brisbane. We marvelled at filling in an online form to request songs on the radio because the ABC had the only websites we knew of at the time. (The whole situation was so new that triple j's URL was abc.net.au/triplej!) Weather forecasting and other geosciences foresaw the potential of satellites in their fields, and soon afterwards it was applied to archaeology.

The next phase seems to be a phase of mass adoption, or at least mass availability, when political economic factors take hold. Enough enterprising and experimental early adopters have figured out how the mechanisms work, and how to make them operate optimally; what the "rules" or "best practices" should be.

Typically conservative corporations stop being dismissive of the new concepts and techniques, and stop being stubbornly averse to disruption, carried by the critical mass of r&d. Governments become involved, both in regulation and provision. 

Often, ambitious politicians envision the benefits of mass provision, leading to public institutions now considered sacred by default. Here, the Australian Communications Exchange gave birth to Telecommunications Australia (now Telstra) and the nationwide emergency services switchboard, generating incentive and demand for telephones in the home. Other examples include the ABC itself - or BBC or PBS - crucially providing content for the cutting edge media of radio, television, and of course internet. 

Governments started a network of airports, literally building capacity for future commercial airlines, even in competition with railway lines and seaports. Governments compare themselves and compete with each other, which is one reason why Frankfurt has an international airport to rival London's Heathrow, and why Australians will keep making jokes about their internet being worse than Kazakhstan, Romania, South Africa, and even New Zealand.

In the next phase, corporations become more involved, if only because they're the only vehicle for limitless investment in the technology and its potential. Governments create a new market, and new operators find services to provide there. Without Google providing searching, indexing, caching, and analytical services, someone else would (even if they were sub/national libraries, archives, and research institutions). Without iTunes providing cheap IP licensing and access to valuable back catalogues, the likes of Napster, Kazaa, and Megaupload allowed file conversion and sharing of music and videos freely. 

Often, there's a final phase, when government becomes a customer for the newly unleashed applications of technology. A high concept example is the demand for facial and voice recognition, and "big data" has become a ubiquitous computing industry fixation. As for geocaches, I can already see how useful they can be for local and national tourism bodies, and a further innovation for museum and gallery provision.

Information farming

During research about different publishing models I came across this graph about the cost breakdowns (focusing on published academic journals, unsurprisingly). The section which intrigued me most was the calculation of added cost, if proofreaders and peer reviewers were properly paid for their time. That led me to wonder: who should be responsible for quality control in the market for information?

To make it translate more easily, let's imagine that instead it's like agriculture. Is it the farmer's job to ensure the highest quality of product goes to market, because they take such pride in their work? After all, they get public subsidies simply to plant, grow, and harvest. 

Is it the supplier's role? Their brand faces the customer, so they'll suffer any reputation damage from too much faulty product being supplied. Is it the role of the retailer/wholesalers, so that they can identify and neutralise any consumer risk in their supply chains? 

Is it the role of government, to ensure that all actors in the market operate to a high minimal standard, to minimise any threats to the population at large? (Particularly topical now, with the commentary about who should do what to contain any contagion from covid 19.)

 Should all the responsibility be transferred to the end consumer, where people can do as they like on the basis of "buyer beware"?

 Is it instead up to activist nonprofit groups, to conduct clandestine investigations, questioning the way the market works, and why?

 Is it instead part of the work of other farmers, to take the time to check each other's work, to advance the base standard of the entire industry? Hopefully then, one day, someone will benefit from that process to make a breakthrough which will revolutionise and advance their field in unforeseen ways.

Quickly on wikis

This is one of the #23things which links today's internet with its historical origins. It is based on:

"collaborative websites which can be directly edited merely by using a web browser…by anyone with access to it". 

That quote comes from Wiktionary, "the free online dictionary", whose entries are built, and later built upon, by its users. It's related to the famous Wikipedia, a collaborative encyclopedia.

Attitudes to Wikimedia projects have tended to be derisive and elitist, exactly because it's common people contributing their knowledge freely, bit by bit, in their own language, relying on other volunteers to check its authenticity. Anecdotal evidence supports this; we all must have heard a story of someone logging into Wikipedia to change an article, just to win an argument at the time.

That argument broke down for me after realising two things:

1. Wikimedia material is updated faster than professional academia, and
2. The information in it is surprisingly detailed, and surprisingly high quality, since it's not aimed at any particular audience.

At this point, I remember a time in primary school where we had to look up the meanings behind days of the week and months of the year. I had the Oxford dictionary, which was different to everyone else's, and told me this much:

" The day of the week after Tuesday and before Thursday".

By contrast, Wiktionary tells us this much:

" The fourth day of the week in many religious traditions, and the third day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 norm; it follows Tuesday and precedes Thursday".

Its page goes on to discuss the etymology (word origin), audio clips for pronunciation, as well as writing guide in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The online entry also lists informal and derived terminology, translations, and how its use and spelling has changed over time [in English]. As said on the homepage:

" Wiktionary has grown beyond a standard dictionary and now includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics and extensive appendices. We aim to include not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it".

Just like Wikipedia, the homepage for Wiktionary has an introduction, and some content to help people begin: a featured word of the day in English, and the "foreign word of the day". They also include links to the standards they use, and an experimental space for new users.

Extensive use of hyperlinks is a distinguishing feature of Wikimedia, making them more interactive than standard articles or other pages of text. For this reason, I kept the links in both previous definitions. In this way, it took only four clicks/links to go from the homepage to the Wikipedia article about "play as therapy" for small children. Linking so many unrelated articles this way has led to Wikimedia being recognised as a massive, though useful, time sink, both for users and contributors. The way that different Wikimedia entries link to each other also forms a very well-connected data empire of its own.

Because of their simple design and construction, and the intensity of engagement by the target user community, wikis are popular on other social media. The urban dictionary should get a special mention, since it helps anyone with a net connection to keep up to date with slang, both in a contemporary and historical sense. In the same vein, fandom.com gives as much detail as you can handle about any particular game, movie, TV series, or other pop culture obsession.

In short: Wikimedia are a great resource for anyone generally, but especially those of the information professions. They're free, easy to use and understand, and as thorough as we allow them to be.