DailyDirt: Everyone Has Blindspots

A few years ago, there were some video demonstrations about perception and how when you're focused on looking for one thing, you can completely miss seeing obvious other things (like a gorilla or other monkey business). People tend to rely on vision a lot (unless you're Daredevil), but it's not always the most reliable sense.

• If a person who was born blind could be given eyesight, would he/she be able to understand a visual world based on past sensory (eg. tactile) experiences? This is called Molyneux's problem, and the answer appears to be "nope" -- based on several congenitally blind patients who gained vision by various surgeries (to remove cataracts, etc). People who gain vision can subsequently learn how to map their tactile knowledge to their new eyesight, but it takes some time. [url]



• Prosopagnosia is a different kind of blindness -- it's also called "face blindness" and gives people suffering from it the inability to recognize faces (and even facial expressions). This problem can also affect a person's ability to recognize animals and cars, as well as a sense of direction. This disorder might also not be that uncommon if about 2.5% of the population has it, and there's no cure, but maybe augmented reality glasses might help. [url]



• Blindsight may be a strange form of consciousness? Some people with healthy eyes can be blind if their brains don't recognize visual stimuli, but visual information may still make its way into a subconscious awareness. Blindsighted patients can sometimes recognize facial expressions, and blindsight can be induced in normally-sighted volunteers using transcranial magnetic stimulation. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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LogRhythm mashes up security and big data to give SMBs better defense in one tool

Security Intelligence Management (SIM) can even the playing field between IT and cybersecurity attackers. Here's how one of the leaders in the space offers a real-time battle strategy.

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Court To Film Director: You Must First Create An Infringing Work Before We Can Discuss Whether Or Not It's Actually Infringing

Is there anything more gloriously effed-up than IP law? I submit to you there is not. Here's the sub-headline for Eriq Gardner's Hollywood Reporter article, which deftly sums up the predicament facing a filmmaker looking to make a movie based on an old Buck Rogers novella.

Don Murphy can only clear rights if he potentially violates them first.

That's the ruling boiled down to a dozen words. The details, while enlightening, do nothing to change the underlying fact that Murphy may have to get sued for copyright infringement before he's allowed to prove he isn't infringing on anything.

That's not the only conundrum Murphy's facing. The other is this: no studio wants to touch the project until the rights have been sorted out. Murphy announced his plans to make a film based on "Armageddon 2419 A.D." at last year's Comic Con. The book was published in 1928. Murphy believes the copyright on the book and characters expired in 1956.

Quite obviously, the trust presiding over the original publisher's estate feels differently. The Dille Trust told Murphy the property must be licensed -- despite offering no proof that the copyright was still valid and despite one of the trust's beneficiaries (Robert Dille) being on board as a co-writer.

So, Murphy did what others have done: sued to have the work declared in the public domain. The problem is he hasn't infringed on the possibly uninfringeable work. The court, relying on a 2007 Supreme Court decision, basically tells Murphy he must start making this possibly-infringing work before it can start addressing his public domain claims.

Looking at the Buck Rogers case, Conti applies the Supreme Court's holding by questioning whether the dispute rises to an actual controversy from "immediacy" and "reality."

Regarding immediacy, Conti writes:

"In this case, the amended complaint does not contain specific, or even approximate, allegations about when plaintiff could begin film production, let alone release the allegedly infringing film, assuming a declaratory judgment is entered in plaintiff’s favor. A dispute 'lacks immediacy' where there are no allegations about 'when, if ever,' the product will be 'used in a manner that could potentially infringe' the intellectual property rights of another. Plaintiff’s nebulous allegations that 'development of the [film] is well underway' and that 'further production efforts could be undertaken in short order' are conclusory and insufficient to show the immediacy required by Article III."

Examining reality, Conti continues:

"At this early stage, the production and release of plaintiff’s film are 'contingent future event[s]' that may not occur 'as anticipated' or 'indeed may not occur at all.' As pleaded by plaintiff, the film project is still in an inchoate stage. Plaintiff does not allege it hired or entered into preliminary agreements with the parties 'integral to the commencement of production'—let alone the release—of a 'major motion picture.'... Plaintiff received 'preliminar[y,] . . . firm interest' in the project from Warner Brothers and Sony. Without allegations of actual commitment or intent to commit—through, for example, letters of intent—plaintiff’s vague, equivocal assertions fail to demonstrate the reality of this dispute. Plaintiff does not allege it entered into finalized, or even preliminary, financing, acquisition, licensing, or distribution agreements with these companies in connection with its potential film."

The Supreme Court decision being cited to put Murphy in the awkward position of having to roll the dice on copyright infringement has nothing to do with copyright. It's all about patents. And it's actually a good decision.

The latest ruling is in the MedImmune/Genentech case looking at whether or not licensing a patent means you can't challenge its validity. Genentech (and plenty of other patent holders) claimed that once you licensed a patent, you were basically saying that you agreed to its validity, and could no longer challenge it. The lower court agreed. This is problematic in a lot of ways, especially with the rise in patent extortion lawsuits, where it's often cheaper to just license the patent rather than fight it. MedImmune licensed the patent early on, rather than waste money fighting it, but challenged it later on when the patent in question became much more important (and the license much more expensive). With an 8 to 1 decision, the Supreme Court sided with MedImmune, saying that licensing a patent shouldn't preclude challenging that patent's validity. Another small step in the right direction.

And yet, here we are, looking at a director being asked to set himself for a lawsuit by the Dille Trust in order to prove he doesn't owe it anything. And in order to do that, he needs to convince a studio to walk across this IP minefield with him -- something no studio in its right mind would ever be willing to do.

The court has given him permission to file an amended complaint, but it's unclear what purpose that will serve under the Supreme Court's MedImmune decision. The only sensible response is to let the idea die. No studio will back a project based on a disputed property and no director is going to put the work in just to be hit with an injunction and statutory damages if the trust comes up with proof it still holds the copyright.

On the other hand, all the Dille Trust has to do is continue to insist it owns the property… even if it doesn't. That's it. Hail copyright.

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DailyDirt: How Will Anyone Get To Mars?

Traveling to mars is going to be a really, really long term project. We had some fun on the moon and drove around up there in a nifty moon buggy, but we didn't have a commitment to stay there for very long -- or even plans to keep going there once we knew it could be done. Getting astronauts to mars requires a completely different level of planning than going to the moon. Current technology won't get us there (well, at least not alive and healthy), but maybe we're still making some progress with a few untested propulsion systems.

• Russia's national nuclear company Rosatom could build a nuclear-powered engine to get to mars in 90 days -- if it had the funding. The technology was first developed in the 1960s, but no one has really continued to work on various kinds of nuclear-powered propulsion for manned spacecraft (hmm, wonder why..?). Launching radioactive materials on a ship that might not make it into outer space could end in a spectacular disaster, but maybe if someone could build it in space from several small payloads of fissionable material? (Or better yet, build it from fissionable materials already in space....) [url]
• It's possible to send something to mars in just 30 minutes with a (proposed) laser propulsion system. Chemical rockets to mars will take months, but using photonic propulsion could accelerate a small (lightweight, perhaps wafer-thing) object to very high speeds. One catch would be that there wouldn't really be a way to slow it down, unless there was a decelerating laser on the other side. [url]
• It's not beyond the imagination to think that people might someday be able to move asteroids around at will. Getting more water to mars by sending an icy asteroid there might be possible someday, and if we're able to do that we might as well hitch a ride on it. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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How to configure email encryption in Apple Mail

Jesus Vigo covers the steps necessary for encrypting email messages sent and received in Apple Mail.

Music Licensing Shop Harry Fox Agency Appears To Be Scrambling To Fix Its Failure To Properly License Songs

A couple of months ago, I wrote a long post trying to dig into the details of David Lowery's class action lawsuit against Spotify. In the end, while there was some question over whether or not streaming music services really need to get compulsory mechanical licenses for producing reproductions of songs, it seemed like the fact that such licenses are compulsory and can be obtained easily via having the Harry Fox Agency issue a "Notice of Intention" under Section 115, it seemed crazy to think that the various music services had not done that. In fact, we noted that the only way the lawsuits made any sense was if the various music services and HFA ignored this and didn't send out such NOIs. At the time, I noted that this would be a surprise, and it could mean the services were in deep trouble.

Or perhaps not a surprise... and, yes, some folks may be in deep trouble. Beyond Lowery's lawsuit, a few other similar lawsuits have been filed. Earlier this month, Tim Geigner wrote about a very similar lawsuit filed by Yesh Music against Tidal. Of course, what didn't get as much attention is that Yesh filed very similar lawsuits against a bunch of other music services as well, including Google Music, Slacker, Line Corporation (which runs Mix Radio) and Guerva (which I think is a misspelling of the music site Guvera). Yesh also sued Deezer a few months ago.

One of the key questions that came up following the reporting on all of these cases is the Harry Fox Agency's role in all of this. HFA, an organization that was set up by the publishers themselves is supposed to be responsible for managing compulsory licensing for the vast majority (though not all) of popular songwriters (remember, HFA is about compositions/publishing, not sound recordings). But it's beginning to look seriously like HFA just fell asleep on the job and didn't bother to do the one key thing it was supposed to do for all these music services: file Section 115 NOIs.

Both David Lowery and another songwriter, Ari Herstand, have recently posted examples of HFA suddenly sending them NOIs that appear to be rushed and are showing up way after they're supposed to. I rarely agree with Lowery about anything, but it's seriously looking like HFA totally fucked up here. Big time. Here's the notice Lowery received: As Lowery notes, this NOI was sent on February 16th, 2016, but was signed by a Spotify exec who left the company in 2015, for a song that showed up on Spotify in 2011 and using an HFA address that didn't exist until 2012. Basically... it looks like HFA is rushing around trying to send out NOIs that it failed to do properly, and doing a pretty half-assed job about it. And that seems especially stupid when it comes to issuing those NOIs to the guy who is already suing over those missing NOIs.

Herstand just received a similarly late NOI from HFA for his music appearing on Apple Music. As he notes, his notice says the music should appear on Apple Music as of March 10th of 2016, but it's actually been there since Apple Music launched last summer. He also notes this is the first NOI he's ever received from HFA, while he has received plenty of NOIs from the much smaller HFA competitor Music Reports "on a regular basis."

So, given all that, it sure looks like HFA didn't do the one thing that it was supposed to be doing all along, and that's... going to be bad news for someone. The big question is who? All of the lawsuits have been against the various music services, but without being privy to the contracts between HFA and the music services themselves, I'd be shocked if they didn't include some sort of indemnity clauses, basically saying that if music isn't licensed because of HFA's own failures to do its job that any liability falls back on HFA.

And, if that's the case, HFA could be on the hook for a ton of copyright infringement. If it's true that it's basically been ignoring the fairly simple NOI process for a lot of artists, then that's going to be a major scandal -- but one that seems a lot harder to pin on the music services themselves. They went to HFA and hired the company to handle mechanical licenses. There may be more going on behind the scenes here, but at a first pass, based on what appears to be happening, HFA may be in some seriously deep trouble.

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