Monthly Archives: April 2011

Documenting fair use

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Documentary.org has a wonderful write-up by Tamsin Rawady and Alex Buono about fair use in the documentary film setting.  As the writers/producers of Bigger Stronger Faster, a documentary about pop cultural influences driving performance-enhancing drug use, they grappled with how to tell their story legally:

The first problem we encountered is that it seemed like Fair Use was sort of an urban legend: Does it really exist? Can you really use archival clips without licensing them? And does anyone understand how this all works?

Fortunately, Rawady and Buono retained excellent legal counsel who were able to walk them through the issues and get them a highly defensible final cut, though even that wasn’t easy:

After the film has been released, expect to get calls from copyright holders upset about your use of their footage. Most copyright holders have never heard of Fair Use, and you should allow some money in your budget to have your attorney call and talk through the evidence you have. If you have been responsible in your Fair Use decisions, most complaints will only require one phone call from your attorney to make them go away. We encountered a handful of copyright holders from some very large corporations who were not pleased that their clips had been used in our film, but we were well prepared by our attorneys and had no problem avoiding any legal claims. [emphasis added]

I’m certainly happy that it worked out better for Bigger Faster Stronger than it did for Slaying the Dragon:  Reloaded.  Rawady and Buono’s story reminds us that, in law as in life, (1) an ounce of prevention is often worth a pound of cure and (2) the best (fair use) defense is a good (proactive) offense.

Further resources and reading:

If you want peace, you should head to Maine

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The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its rankings of the most peaceful states in the United States and Maine tops the list. Here is some more information on this ranking:

The index, which defines peace as “the absence of violence,” looks at a set of five indicators, including homicide rates, violent crimes, percentage of the population in jail, number of police officers and availability of small arms (per 100,000 people) to rank the states. The data are drawn from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On that basis, the institute finds that peace in the USA improved by 8% from 1995 to 2009.

It notes a significant correlation between a state’s level of peace and its economic opportunity, education and health but finds peacefulness is politically neutral — neither Republican nor Democratic states have an advantage.

Maine was ranked first overall because it topped the list of states on three of the five USPI indicators: number of violent crimes, number of police officers and incarceration rate.

There is some interesting regional variation with the northeast generally being more peaceful and the south being less peaceful. I’m sure there are a number of commentators and sociologists who could comment on the these findings about the South.

But, like many such rankings (see a recent example here), I’m sure people would ask whether these measures actually get at the presence or absence of violence. The percentage of the population in jail could be related to violence but there are plenty of other ways to end up in jail. The number of police officers could be related to violence but it could also be linked to funding and perceptions about crime. In terms of the availability of small arms, does this necessarily lead to violence?

Using these measures seems linked to how this organization views peace. According to the full report (page 8 of the PDF), “The methodological framework was based on envisaging a society that is perfectly at peace; a society where there is no violence, no police and no one in jail.” Here is the explanation about using the measure of small arms (page 8 of the PDF): “Additionally, this logic also applies to small arms: “the USPI does not make judgments about appropriate levels of small arms in society but rather considers their prevalence a reflection of the need for self-defense and a potential to generate violence.”

I don’t study in this area so it is interesting to read about how some of these things can ever be measured. Regarding getting a measure of small arms availability (page 10 of the PDF):

Although the U.S. has excellent data for many statistics, there is no reliable data on small arms availability, small arms ownership, or small arms sales within the U.S. or within the states of the U.S. An accurate measure of gun prevalence cannot be calculated from administrative records alone. For this reason many studies on gun prevalence use a quantitative proxy. The proxy used in the USPI is: fi rearm suicides as a percentage of total suicides (FS/S). As this indicator varied significantly from year to year for some states, a five year moving average was used in order to smooth out the variance. For example, the fi gure used for Alabama for 2008 was an average of FS/S for 2003-2007. More detail on why this proxy was chosen is supplied in Appendix B to this report.

The availability of small arms also had the lowest weighting in the rankings.

High vacancy rates at strip malls and shopping centers

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More sour news regarding the economy, this time regarding retail space in strip malls and shopping malls:

Mall vacancies hit their highest level in at least 11 years in the first quarter, new figures from real-estate research company Reis Inc. showed. In the top 80 U.S. markets, the average vacancy rate was 9.1%, up from 8.7%.

The outlook is especially bad for strip malls and other neighborhood shopping centers. Their vacancy rate is expected to top 11.1% later this year, up from 10.9%, Reis predicts. That would be the highest level since 1990.

In 2005, the mall-vacancy rate hit a low of 5.1%. For strip centers the boom-time low vacancy rate was 6.7% that same year.

The article goes on to mention how this problem is particularly acute on the suburban fringe where development was taking place or was predicted to take place.

While strip malls take a beating from those opposed to sprawl and suburban garishness (think James Howard Kunstler – see his TED speech on the topic here), they can be quite important to local economies. From where I live in the suburbs (roughly 25-30 miles west of Chicago), there are numerous strip malls, including a number that I can walk to within fifteen minutes. While most of these businesses are not flashy, they encompass certain consumer needs from car care places to drug stores to restaurants to hardware stores. I have always wondered how businesses thrive in these settings: there is so much competition (why can’t the customer just go to the competition in the strip mall down the street?) and many decry the strip mall (though it would be an interesting debate to see whether people think they are worse than big box stores).

Using Groupon to sell real estate

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With the real estate market in the doldrums (and no end in sight), there are reports about a new strategy that would leverage the popular site Groupon:

In the Dream Town deal, the brokerage will pay out $1,000 in cash at closing to home buyers or sellers that spend $25 for the Groupon. The voucher is good for one year from the date of purchase. The offer launches on Friday and will run for a week. On Monday, it will be the featured deal for Chicago subscribers.

The Dream Town deal tips with 50 vouchers purchased, said co-founder and president Yuval Degani. The coupons apply to both traditional and distressed properties, and buyers can be owner-occupiers or investors. The transaction must be at least $150,000 to qualify for the deal, and there is a limit of one Groupon per customer. There is no cap on the total number of Groupons that can be sold.

“Our big picture is we’re really an emerging company,” Degani said, noting that Dream Town has focused on its Web presence and search engine optimization, which helps its site appear higher on search results. “What we’re trying to do is acquire new customers. We’re not really looking at (the Groupon deal) as a reduced commission. We’re looking at it as getting customers for life.”

Degani said Dream Town has four locations and 165 agents in the area.

I wonder how many people will take this offer and then use it within a year. Typical Groupon deals are for smaller or more immediate purchases while this asks buyers to consider a bigger and more important purchase. But if you are already looking to buy (though there are a limited number of these people), $1,000 in cash could sound pretty good.

The article also mentions some other innovative offers that have recently popped up on Groupon. Seeing this story reminds me that the outgoing Mayor Daley spoke at length in a speech on campus (here, here, and here) about the success story of Groupon. But a city like Chicago will need a number of companies like Groupon to develop and thrive in order to gain population.

Harvard Crimson makes a case for sociology

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In an editorial about hiring more sociology faculty, the Harvard Crimson discusses the interest in and usefulness of sociology:

[T]his seems to indicate that the increase in sociology concentrators is based on actual interest in the subject matter rather than the perceived ease of the concentration or “herd” mentality—as seems to be the case with economics, in which the increase in concentrators has not corresponded with an increase in tutorial applicants.

Additionally, students across the college are increasingly interested in pre-professional studies—witness the popularity of the global health and health policy secondary and the new interest in a social innovation secondary. Although The Crimson Staff believes that the intent of the College experience is to provide a liberal arts education, sociology is nevertheless the best way to explore pre-professional interests within that framework. In the concentration, one can focus on topics such as “work, organizations, and management” or “health, medicine, and society,” which are good fits for students with a definite career interest in business or healthcare.

Is this increased interest in sociology among Harvard students mirrored elsewhere?

I also agree with this idea that sociology is a great preparation for “pre-professional interests,” particularly when students know they are going on for advanced degrees.

Sounds like a decent pitch to me – and it even has a dig about economics…

A picture of civility

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Carolyn Wright over at Photo Attorney has some good reminders for copyright owners who are contemplating filing lawsuits against infringers:

While most photographers will contact an infringer either directly or through an attorney to attempt to resolve an infringement claim before filing suit, the law doesn’t require it. Instead, you may file your copyright infringement lawsuit immediately after finding the infringement without ever contacting the infringer.  But it’s usually best to first contact an infringer for a variety of reasons…. [emphasis added]

Carolyn cites the expense of litigation, needless escalation of conflict, alienation of a former/future client, and (potentially) mistaken accusation as reasons to talk to a suspected infringer before filing a lawsuit.

As in so many areas of life and law, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  An overly litigious, scorched-earth approach to copyright enforcement rarely results in good outcomes, even (especially?) for copyright owners.

I applaud Carolyn’s civil approach to resolving copyright conflicts.  I can only wish that everyone took her talk-first, file-later approach.

The benefits of Best Buy’s flex schedules for employees

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Two sociologists have published a study in the American Sociological Review that shows that employees at Best Buy’s headquarters benefit from flex schedules:

Sociology professors Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen said a flexible work schedule that focuses on results and not just activity cut turnover at Best Buy’s Richfield headquarters by 45 percent while improving productivity.

The flex schedules, they said, cut down on stress and work interruptions due to personal issues because employees were able to find a better balance between their work and home lives…

The U of M study followed 600 workers for eight months after the start of the program, 300 who worked under the flex plan and 300 who continued working the traditional 9-5 day…

The study showed that 6 percent of the employees working under the flex plan left Best Buy during the study period, while 11 percent of the control group left during that time. Also, the results were about the same regardless of gender, age, tenure, job satisfaction, and stage of life.

Turnover can be a problem for companies who then have to hire new employees and train them so cutting turnover even five percent is no small matter.

Based on the success of the program, Best Buy has changed some of their practices:

The research showed that the flex program led to Best Buy getting rid of “low-value work,” such as unnecessary meetings. The researchers said staff and supervisors started re-considering their work patterns, figuring out what activities were the most productive.

It would be interesting to see exactly how the employees in the flex program talk about these changes. And I would be interested in hearing more about this trade-off in a company stressing results rather than activity – are there downsides to this?

Possible Fermilab “breakthough” illustrates statistical significance

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Scientists at Fermilab may be on the verge of a scientific breakthrough regarding “a new elementary particle or a new fundamental force of nature.” There is just one problem:

But scientists on the Fermilab team say there is about a 1 in 1,000 chance that the results are a statistical fluke — odds far too high for them to claim a discovery.

“That’s no more than what physicists tend to call an ‘observation’ or an ‘indication,’ ” said Caltech physicist Harvey Newman.

For the finding to be considered real, researchers have to reduce the chances of a statistical fluke to about 1 in a million.

One of the key concepts in a statistics or social research course is statistical significance, where researchers say that they are 95% certain (or more) that their result is not just the result due to their sample or chance but that it actually reflects the population or reality. These scientists at Fermilab then want to be really sure that the results reflect reality as they want to reduce their possible error to 1 in a million.

Beyond working with the calculations, the scientists are also hoping to replicate their findings and rule out other explanations for what they are seeing:

Researchers hope that more data compiled at Fermilab will shed light on the matter, or that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva will be able to replicate the findings. “We will know this summer when we double the data sets and see if it is still there,” said physicist Rob Roser of Fermilab, who is a spokesman for the project…

What the team must to do now, Roser said, is “eliminate all the mundane explanations.” They have been working on that, he said, and decided it was time to go public and let others know what they had found so far.

And science rolls on.

A rise in the number of “domino dads”

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A new study suggests there is a rise in the number of fathers who have children with multiple mothers:

More than a quarter of all U.S. mothers with more than one child had some of those kids with different men, according to a new study.

Among African-American women with several children, that figure rises to more than half; among Hispanics, it’s more than a third, and among whites it’s 22%.

Multiple partner fertility, as the phenomenon is called in academic circles, is a cause of concern among many sociologists, since studies have shown that growing up in a home in which different men cycle in and out is not good for a child’s health or well being. Think of these families as having domino dads, with each one’s departure putting pressure on the next.

The articles goes on to discuss some of the negative impact this might have on children. But more broadly, this hints at a way of life for many that is quite different from the image of the nuclear family or even single-parenthood: families where multiple fathers are in and out of the picture.

It’s Friday, I’m in Love (With Copyright Law)

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You’re no doubt one of the multi-millions who’ve seen Rebecca Black’s viral video Friday.  Or the “Bob Dylan” cover.  Or the Colbert-Fallon cover.

Anyway, you’ve probably seen it in one form or another.

Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Aaron Moss (partner at Greenberg Glusker) provides a thorough analysis of the copyright issues surrounding the song itself and a brewing legal dispute between Black’s family and Ark Music Factory.  Over the course of the article, Moss cites the following rights/licenses implicated by Black’s viral video and its subsequent marketing:

  • copyright in the sound recording
  • copyright in the composition
  • mechanical license
  • digital phonograph delivery license
  • synchronization license
  • master use license
  • public performance license (in the composition)
  • digital public performance license (in the sound recording)

Confused yet?  You’re probably supposed to be.  As Moss puts it in the section explaining that the copyright in the sound recording and the copyright in the composition are two completely separate rights:

This rather unintuitive concept, by itself, has been enough to pay countless lawyers’ salaries over the years.

Or as Moss notes as an aside when explaining the concept of digital performance licenses:

As a result of the way copyright law has developed — which is to say, ad hoc, aimlessly, in fits and starts, and with plenty of lobbyist influence…

I highly recommend reading Moss’ entire piece.  It’s a good reminder of just how convoluted contemporary copyright law is and just how many actors (artists, session musicians, engineers, label personnel, etc.) may have to agree in order to exploit an existing song in a new way.