1. The Safe Harbor provision sure does cover the YouTube site,
2. YouTube kicks a** implementing it, and finally,
3. Safe-Harbor-defeating “actual knowledge” of infringement means actual instances of infringement, not some vague knowledge of infringing activity, or whatever it was that Viacom was trying to assert.

Viacom v. YouTube, summary judgment order

Orphan work: SpilledCoffee.jpg

Ironically, I was about to write a blog post, A New World of Orphan Works.  I had wanted a picture of spilled coffee in an ad for OregonLaws.org:  I had found this one online, perfect for my project, but without any attribution.  Contacting the web page author didn’t help.

Enter Tin Eye, a “reverse image search”. Upload an image, and it instantly finds many places on the web where it appears.

It may turn into a really useful tool for several purposes.  Here, it found unauthorized re-uses of a product logo belonging to Panic Software, a local Portland software shop:

Here, a more typical search result showing where one’s work ends up:

Finally, Tin Eye can be used to track down the origin of an “orphan work”.  In my case, I discovered that I already had the rights to use the image (stock photo in a collection I own).

http://www.tineye.com/

http://www.tineye.com/cool_searches

(“DRM-free” has a mushy definition, but it basically refers to digital media files {e.g., mp3s} that don’t have copy-protection or purchase information indelibly encoded into them.  For example, anything that you record yourself, on your own computer, will be DRM-free.  In contrast, most songs purchased in the past from iTunes do have DRM, which ensure that only the purchaser can listen to them.)

But what I can’t figure out is, why do people want DRM-free so badly?

After all, in the case of iTunes’ DRM-encoded files, I find that as an owner, I have more than enough flexibility to excercise the rights that I’ve been licensed; such as viewing files on the various devices and computers I own, and making backups for myself.  Here then, are my best guesses why people want DRM-free:

1. So that they can enjoy their media on Linux.  This is why I’d like DRM-free files, but I can’t imagine this accounts for most others.
2. (In the case of iTunes) So that the media files can be viewed on media players besides iPods.  But this strikes me as unlikely as well; there are other sources of music besides iTunes.
3. (Abstracting #1 and #2 together) To decouple the media from the device required to view it.  That’s a great goal, but is this what’s behind the wave of desire for DRM-free content?
4. Something else that I’ve forgotten.  Whoops!  Waited too long to write this post.

So what is it?  Can somebody drop me a line and let me know why they prefer DRM-free media