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As Expected, Ridiculous, Wrong, Exaggerating And Misleading Report Claims
That 'Piracy' Is Killing Jobs
,----[ Quote ]
| As was leaked earlier this week, a study paid
| for by the International Chamber of Commerce
| has come out with ridiculously misleading and
| misguided report about how "piracy" is
| killing jobs all through Europe. The tagline
| is that it's "costing" 1.2 million jobs and
| about $330 million. And, of course, that sort
| of report is the kind that the press loves,
| and so we get a series of headlines:
|
| * Net piracy puts 1.2m EU jobs in peril,
| study shows
| * Internet piracy taking big toll on jobs
| * Illegal-file sharing could 'cost
| billions' by 2015
| * Piracy threatens Europe's creative
| industries
| * EU must take 'urgent' action on piracy,
| report warns
|
| And on and on and on and on. Of course, it's
| not even close to true. The real story is
| that for certain companies who refuse to
| adapt and refuse to embrace what consumers
| want and what technology allows, modern
| technology will cause them to fail. However,
| at the same time, it has already opened up
| new opportunities and created new jobs while
| making it easier and more efficient to
| create, promote, distribute and consume
| content. Somehow, however, none of that seems
| to show up in these studies.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100317/1617328605.shtml
Interview: Nina Paley (author of "Sita Sings the Blues" and the two
"Minute Meme" animations)
,----[ Quote ]
| Her current project â recently funded â has
| been to produce âMinute Memes.â These are
| short animated films which promote free
| culture ways of thinking about copyright,
| specifically intended to counter propaganda
| from industry copyright maximalists like the
| MPAA and the RIAA.
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/interview_nina_paley_author_Sita_Sings_the_Blues_and_two_Minute+Meme+animations
How The Concept of Free Can Work For Small Publishers
,----[ Quote ]
| Much of the talk by the big 6 publishers has
| been stress over cannibalization of print
| sales, or the idea of replacement sales, by
| ebooks. For midlist publishers such as
| ourselves, I believe we fight against
| substitution. We capture the âbrowserâ
| market. If our title is not available or
| visible, a customer will simply substitute
| for another one in the genre. Free gave us
| the visibility that we could not purchase.
`----
http://nathanhenrion.com/2010/03/11/how-the-concept-of-free-can-work-for-small-publishers/
UK's Times Online Starts Blocking Aggregators Hours After Aggregators Win Copyright Tribunal Ruling Against Newspapers
,----[ Quote ]
| There's been something of a battle going on
| in the UK over news aggregators. Obviously,
| we've all heard about the various threats by
| companies like News Corp. in the US to sue
| Google over its Google News product, but a
| lot of this has already been playing out on a
| smaller scale in the UK. Last year we wrote
| about newspapers in the UK threatening
| aggregators like NewsNow, leading some to
| start blocking NewsNow crawlers. This is
| silly in the extreme. These aggregators offer
| links to the news. The "issue" with NewsNow
| is that it sells this as a service to
| companies -- and the newspapers claim they
| deserve a cut. Note that NewsNow provides
| just a link and a headline and the tiniest of
| blurbs. It's much less than even Google News
| provides. The newspapers seem to think that
| no one can profit from advertising their own
| stories unless they get a direct cut.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100317/1128238596.shtml
Steve Albini Explains Why Royalties Don't Make Sense
,----[ Quote ]
| Albini recently made at a conference about
| the music business, with a great quote about
| the focus of so many on royalties:
|
| "Royalties are a means to pay producers
| in the future -- and in perpetuity --
| based on record sales," said Albini, who
| is also a music journalist. "If a band
| does a show, blows a whole bunch of minds
| and a bunch of people become fans and go
| out and buy millions of records, the
| producer gets paid. I think that's
| ethically unsustainable.
|
| "I don't think you should pay a doctor
| extra because a patient doesn't die. I
| think the doctor should be busting his
| ass for every patient. I don't think I
| should get paid for someone else's
| success."
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100315/0323318563.shtml
Angus Introducing Private Copying Levy Bill, Flexible Fair Dealing Motion
,----[ Quote ]
| Second, the bill expands the levy to audio
| recording devices, defined in C-499 as "a
| device that contains a permanently embedded
| data storage medium, including solid state or
| hard disk, designed, manufactured and
| advertised for the purpose of copying sound
| recordings, excluding any prescribed kind of
| recording device." This covers everything -
| iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, Androids,
| iPads, personal computers. While the CPCC
| (the private copying collective) may not
| target all of these devices, there is nothing
| in the bill that prevents them from doing so.
|
| Third, the bill deals solely with sound
| recordings, but there have already been calls
| to extend to video and other forms of
| content. Expanding the levy in this manner
| without addressing those issues leaves open
| the prospect of an even bigger levy in the
| future.
`----
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4870/125/
Gorillaz dropped into Time Warp, says Eddy Grant
,----[ Quote ]
| The reggae artist is outraged over alleged
| similarities between his 80s song and
| Gorillaz' new single, Stylo
|
| [...]
|
| Curious listeners can compare the songs for
| themselves (see below) â paying particular
| attention to Stylo's drowsy three-note synth
| riff, 40 seconds in. In comments to the NME,
| Grant suggested Gorillaz' publishers already
| visited a musicologist to evaluate this
| similarity. "[Normally] I would have gotten a
| call from EMI to say, 'Damon [Albarn] wants
| to use Time Warp. What arrangement can you
| guys come to? Would you claim 100%, would you
| claim 60%, or 70% of whatever it is?' That
| phone call never came. Instead what happened
| is somebody went straight to a musicologist,
| implying that there was some kind of pre-
| knowledge of some kind of infringement."
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/mar/16/gorillaz-time-warp-eddy-grant
Google slams Viacom for secret YouTube uploads
,----[ Quote ]
| Google Inc accused Viacom Inc of secretly
| uploading its videos to YouTube even as the
| media conglomerate publicly denounced the
| online video site for copyright infringement,
| according to court documents made public on
| Thursday.
`----
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Interview-Eben-Moglen-Freedom-vs-the-Cloud-Log-955421.html
Broadcast Yourself
,----[ Quote ]
| For years, Viacom continuously and secretly
| uploaded its content to YouTube, even while
| publicly complaining about its presence
| there. It hired no fewer than 18 different
| marketing agencies to upload its content to
| the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the
| videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It
| opened YouTube accounts using phony email
| addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's
| to upload clips from computers that couldn't
| be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to
| promote its own shows, as a matter of company
| policy Viacom routinely left up clips from
| shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by
| ordinary users. Executives as high up as the
| president of Comedy Central and the head of
| MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips
| from shows like The Daily Show and The
| Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
`----
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html
Analysis Of Google And Viacom's Arguments Over YouTube: A Lot Of He Said/She Said
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100318/1226148617.shtml
ACS:Law Keeps Sending Out More Threat Letters -- Condemned By Politicians, ISPs And General Common Sense
,----[ Quote ]
| Just as Davenport Lyons lawyers are being
| sent for disciplinary action over the firm's
| practice of sending large numbers of "pay up
| or we sue" pre-settlement letters, ACS:Law,
| the shady firm that effectively spun out of
| Davenport Lyons to do the same thing is
| ramping up its efforts. This isn't a huge
| surprise. Late last year, the firm said it
| was preparing to send out 30,000 letters,
| despite numerous studies showing that these
| letters regularly target innocent people, but
| scare many people into just paying to avoid a
| lawsuit.
`----
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100317/1105298595.shtml
O2 condemns lawyers targeting alleged file-sharers
,----[ Quote ]
| Mobile firm O2 has stepped into the row over
| thousands of controversial letters that are
| being sent to alleged illegal file-sharers in
| the UK.
|
| It condemned the attempts "by rights holders
| and their lawyers to bully or threaten our
| customers".
`----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8570913.stm
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