January 28, 2003
The Copyright Wars Heat Up
With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.
- ...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."
What can you say. Spot on.
January 27, 2003
NET Act May Be Coming to You
Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.
On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.
January 20, 2003
Environmentalism for the Internet?
James Boyle at Duke Law School thinks that for the politics of intellectual property, we need the model of environmentalism to understand how to deal with it, and solve some of the problems.
Paper here: A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?
- The second key factor is the decreasing importance, literally the diminishing marginal cost, of medium as opposed to message... In the information economy, the medium is not the message. The medium is irrelevant.
- ...The intellectual property regime could make -- or break -- the educational, political, scientific and cultural promise of the Net. Indeed, even if our only concern were censorship, it would be perverse to concentrate exclusively on the direct criminalisation of content by governments. The digital world gives new salience to private censorship -- the control by intellectual property holders of distribution of and access to information. The recent Scientology
cases are only the most obvious manifestation of this tendency.January 19, 2003
25 Lessons in HYPNOTISM
by Ethan Persoff / Horse Music: Music made from other music. 13 Tracks, recorded March through September 2002, posted online January 2003. I just love internet distribution; it's the access we get to so many things that would have been so difficult to find, the access to so many customers that can now be reached, the material that would have been impossible to make money on when it had to all be recorded on physical media in order to be distributed.
1st track, introduced by Loren Greene. Very nice. Freebasing the internet never felt so good.
January 16, 2003
Compulsory Licensing
Derek Slater has the notes on Terry Fisher's talk on his Compulsory Licensing plan. The talk was given at Stanford's CIS. Webcast here. It's a start on figuring out how to get creators paid in the era of P2P. I don't yet know what to think about this, but it does seem like a very good start, and on first pass, very possible.
January 08, 2003
January 07, 2003
Napsterization of the Movies On Trial
Laura Rich and Hane Lee's Analysis: Napsterization: Music was just the beginning covers the movie industry's fight over DeCSS, and their attempts to stop the posting of the code, that frankly, is all over the internet.
- For now, the MPAA is wading through constant legal battles in an attempt to stave off video piracy. But increasingly, consumers are capable of trading film files the same way they've been trading songs. Such activity could begin to impact the $8 billion video-rental market within a year if online distribution isn't properly addressed.
Well, we know that didn't happen (this was written in 2000). In the past year or two, there are a few who download movies, but broadband doesn't have the home penetration yet, to really have the impact that has occured with music. So far, few people seem willing to spend 20-30 hours downloading one film, via KaZaa or Gnutella.
Check out Sight Sound mentioned in the piece, though. They sell downloads of movies over the internet. Thank goodness somebody's trying to work legitimately, with the interent, instead of against it.
January 04, 2003
Rage Against the Machine Say Yes to Downloading
Looks like somebody's in conflict with somebody else over what it means to get napsterized....
- Rage Against the Machine has posted an exclusive collection of free audio downloads and video streams on its official website as a gesture of goodwill toward fans who were recently banned from Napster for downloading tracks from the group's new album, "Renegades" (Epic/Sony). The ban was enacted by the group's management and record label without RATM's consent, according to a statement from guitarist Tom Morello.
Your classic artist verses industry tiff. If only the industry could see that loss leaders work for Safeway, and might for the music biz also. Oh well.
January 02, 2003
Matt Johnson of The The on The Boss and How He Ain't Gonna Take It No Mo
The The Verses The Corporate Monster:
- After much deliberation I have decided to offer track by track, week by week free downloads of my latest album 'NakedSelf' from my official website: www.thethe.com.
- This decision has not been taken lightly and below I explain the reasons why. As the tensions between artist and merchant are rising very fast I also want to stress the positive in this statement as I think this is an exhilarating time to be involved in music.
See this movie of an interview with Matt Johnson: 
.
And here's a link to listen to their singles:
