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As far as the “paying for bits” goes, Techdirt has been pointing out for years that people have an intuitive understanding that the digital world is based on making copies of things, and that the cost of making *another* copy once a digital version exists is close to zero.

Open source software and many innovative artists are demonstrating how to cope with a world where the core product is distributed for free:

- charge people for a service related to the product. This may be consulting or legal assurance in the software world, live performances in the music world.
- merchandising. This is a classic in the web comic world, as well as other forms of media. Souvenir editions of material that is available online for free can still be quite profitable.
- convenience. Obtaining copyrighted material illegally is quite tedious and suffers from terrible quality control issues. As iTunes shows, there is plenty of scope in the digital world for filtering and recommendation services that create direct channels from creators to readers at a significantly lower price point than is charged by the traditional gatekeepers.

I ordinarily resist the temptation to write (and more often than not disagree) however I am an avid reader of your material.

You’ve referred to the copyright infringement notice process facilitated by the 2006 amendments to the Copyright Act. Your reference, “I suppose we should be grateful that there’s no proposal here to introduce Infringement Notices, as we had in copyright back in 2006 (then again, it would be hard to justify introducing infringement notices in Trade Mark when they haven’t even been used in copyright 4 years after coming into the legislation, wouldn’t it?)”

I make no comment in relation to your apparent misunderstanding of the rationale/s for the existence of criminal infringement provisions however I would like to raise with you that although the copyright infringement notice provisions were enacted they were never implemented by government.

In a nutshell after much fanfare, no-one in government did anymore than draft guidelines for the use of the notices, no-one issued the pre-requisite paper work (i.e. the blank infringement notice forms etc) or made the ancilliary amendments to associated legislation to allow the use of the notices.

The infringement notices allowed for the removal of the spectre of a criminal history for minor commercial infringers, allowed for cautions where the cops thought the copyright owners overstepped the mark and dramatically reduced the resources law enforcement agencies would need to expend in enforcing the infringement provisions.

So the laws were passed by government; in recognition of a need, that recognition having been derived from industry and commentators but no-one ever implemented the law and no-one noticed!

Given the state of emergency that copyright owners routinely declare in relation to piracy and given the unrelenting anti-copyright industry campaigns waged by some this oversight is stunning to say the least.

I wager that no academic or practitioner is wondering about this oversight in terms other than as evidence of their existing positions. There is in this oversight alone a wealth of topics for research or investigation and it seems, as with more general research in relation to criminal infringement of intellectual property rights, to remain barren ground.

Michael Speck

I am phd student IP INNOVATION in University Technology

Malaysia want to help for perapare proposal a bout IP INNOVATION

I want to Know what is the matter?i want to see samples and

select my plan,aefter more studing i steel dont Know what is

the poblem ststement,…

11 Mar 2011 … Karin N. Calvo-Goller. By Jennifer
Howard. Karin N. Calvo …
chronicle.com/article/After-Loss-in-Court-Scholar/126720/