The White House today proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making “illegal streaming” of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers.

In a 20-page white paper (PDF), the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix “deficiencies that could hinder enforcement” of intellectual property laws.

The report was prepared by Victoria Espinel, the first Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator who received Senate confirmation in December 2009, and represents a broad tightening of many forms of intellectual property law including ones that deal with counterfeit pharmaceuticals and overseas royalties for copyright holders. (See CNET’s report last month previewing today’s white paper.)

Some of the highlights:

• The White House is concerned that “illegal streaming of content” may not be covered by criminal law, saying “questions have arisen about whether streaming constitutes the distribution of copyrighted works.” To resolve that ambiguity, it wants a new law to “clarify that infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony in appropriate circumstances.”

• Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move “would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses.”

• Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it’s generally illegal to distribute hardware or software–such as the DVD-decoding software Handbrake available from a server in France–that can “circumvent” copy protection technology. The administration is proposing that if Homeland Security seizes circumvention devices, it be permitted to “inform rightholders,” “provide samples of such devices,” and assist “them in bringing civil actions.”

The term “fair use” does not appear anywhere in the report. But it does mention Web sites like The Pirate Bay, which is hosted in Sweden, when warning that “foreign-based and foreign-controlled Web sites and Web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts.” (See previous coverage of a congressional hearing on overseas sites.)

The usual copyright hawks, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the paper, which grew out of a so-called joint strategic plan that Vice President Biden and Espinel announced in June 2010…

[continues at CNET]

Gregg Gillis a/k/a Girl Talk. Photo: Tom Purves (CC)

Profiled in 2009’s disinformation documentary Rip: A Remix Manifesto, Gregg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk, is getting the “next big thing” treatment in the New York Times Magazine (incidentally, his new album is slamming and *free* at Illegal-art.net):

Imagine old, bald Pete Townshend shuffling gingerly onstage as a synth burbles up behind him — “Let My Love Open the Door.” Now imagine the rapper Pimp C already on that stage, in a white fur suit and hat, holding up four fingers to show off his bling. A kick line of girls in black minishorts walks it out for DJ Unk, who’s rapping about a kick line of girls, then Levon Helm appears on a drum riser to chirp out “The Weight.” Also onstage: Jay-Z, Black Sabbath, Rick Springfield, Kesha, Bruce Springsteen, Miley Cyrus, the Ramones and Tupac and Biggie Smalls (both back from the dead) and hundreds more. In the audience are a few thousand fans jammed together beneath a blinding light show, waving their arms as rolls of toilet paper and explosions of confetti fall around them. You sense they’re feeling the same freedom, daring and camaraderie that they might at a house party when someone’s parents are away. This is pretty much the state of affairs at a Girl Talk show these days.

Girl Talk is the stage name of the 29-year-old Pittsburgh native Gregg Gillis.

In November, Gillis and his label, Illegal Art, released the fifth Girl Talk album, “All Day,” as a free download. Within 24 hours, several sites had posted annotations of “All Day,” cataloging the samples on the album —there are 373 of them. Download traffic was so heavy that MTV News ran the headline “Girl Talk Apologizes for Breaking the Internet” — hyperbole, but not far from the truth. Illegal-art.net reports that “All Day” was downloaded so often that the servers crashed. In Girl Talk’s honor, Pittsburgh declared Dec. 7, 2010, “Gregg Gillis Day.”

All this excitement is focused on a performer whose instrument is a laptop. Girl Talk songs are mash-ups: chunks of other people’s songs combined into new ones: the Rolling Stones and the rapper Wiz Khalifa, Ice Cube and Devo. The mash-ups sound ironic to the ironically inclined and like pure joy to the joyfully inclined, and for both camps they’re fun to dance to. These are not just a collection of other people’s hooks; Girl Talk has created a new kind of hook that encompasses 50 years of the revolving trends of pop music. Sometimes cynicism is a hook, sometimes the hook is humor, angst, irony, aggression, sex or sincerity. Girl Talk’s music asserts all these things at once…

[continues in the New York Times Magazine]

Basically, I got the worst deal ever when I became a vampire. Every other vampire in history developed a supernatural level of attractiveness when they transformed. But not me. When I look in the mirror*, I just see a pasty, tired, fifteen-going-on-100-year-old looking back at me.
…
I sat next to Chloe today in Art and I could smell that she had type O- blood, which is rare but especially tasty (my dad calls it the champagne of blood). I told her about the goths, the tough gang and the popular gang, and she said she wouldn’t want to be in the popular gang anyway. She is a girl after my own heart. I told her about the rumour that Mr Byrne was a millionaire before he lost all his money and had to become an English teacher, and about how Darren from our class came in on No Uniform Day wearing his PE kit because he’s so poor that these are the only clothes he owns. She didn’t laugh at this and said she felt sorry for him, and I agreed to make myself look caring and sensitive.

You get the idea…

Lauren Davis writes on io9.com:

Adam Richardson has added pixelated alien invaders to actual war photos from Iraq and Afghanistan. And when the Space Invaders descend on a war zone, they find that they have more to contend with more than laser cannons.

It’s almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?

The anxious rhetoric around new technology is really quite shocking in its vehemence, from claims that the player piano will destroy musical taste and the “national throat” to concerns that the VCR is like the “Boston strangler” to claims that only Hollywood’s premier content could make the DTV transition a success. Most of it turned out to be absurd hyperbole, but it’s interesting to see just how consistent the words and the fears remain across more than a century of innovation and a host of very different devices.

So here they are, in their own words—the copyright holders who demanded restrictions on player pianos, photocopiers, VCRs, home taping, DAT, MP3 players, Napster, the DVR, digital radio, and digital TV.

More on ars technica

If William Shatner had a chance to perform with the Fab Four, I hope Lucy would enjoy this: