Category: Copyfighting

The control of ideas and the control of culture

ACTA is now dead in Europe. But let’s not forget the people involved in the most remarkable attempt to pass the most evil legislation in Europe that I have ever had the displeasure to follow. Party politics is full of venal characters, but ACTA certainly sorted the wheat from the chaff.

The other day, I was interested to see the comments on this Google+ post by BoingBoing contributor and general Internet person Sean Bonner. Somebody called Steven G appeared to be complaining about Sean’s lack of attribution. Naively, I assumed he meant the creators of the work, and posted a reply along those lines. But I…

(I posted this to Google+ a couple of weeks ago, but I may as well post it here too) Each time I engage in any activity that involves the legislature, I come away feeling soiled. Despite numerous independent and well-respected studies that said term extension in sound recordings would not achieve anything most people would…

At the 2011 FOSDEM conference in Brussels on Feb 5, 2011, Eben Moglen gave talk called Why Political Liberty Depends on Software Freedom More Than Ever. “Well we can go back to mesh networking. We’ve got to go back to mesh networking. We’ve got to understand how we can assist people, using the ordinary devices…

Over at Louder Than War, there’s a good old argument going on. It’s mainly between Alec Empire (who opposes the Pirate Party and free culture by the sounds of it) and some others who are representing the “progressive” view. As I read Alec’s views, I can’t help thinking that while Atari Teenage Riot is a…

Having received my Flattr invite, I’ve now added buttons to this blog and hope to retire early on the proceeds. (EDIT: They’re now just on the individual post pages, since they load rather slowly) Flattr is a system whereby people can show their appreciation of content on the web. It works by allowing you to…

We now have HMG’s Digital Economy Act in the wild. Conceived (by and?) on behalf of the music and film industries, drafted in ignorance of many technical realities, and rushed through the legislative process without any effective parliamentary scrutiny. So perhaps it’s not surprising that avoiding the Act’s provisions on copyright infringement turns out to…

Everyone as boring as me on the subject of copyright, community and contemporary culture (OMG it alliterates!) has something to say about the Great Paywall of Murdoch. It’s coming to an interface near you in June, we are told. So naturally, I have been ruminating on this too. My thoughts were crystallised when I read…

On January 5th, 2010, The Independent published a photo as a backdrop to a feature inviting readers to submit pictures of the snow and cold weather. But they never asked the photographer if they could use his work. Newspapers and magazines have of course from time immemorial sometimes used work without either attributing, asking or…

I’ve written before about Joost, and while I didn’t predict their complete failure, I did predict one thing that some people seem to have missed: that their irrational faith in DRM was not a good sign. That faith led them to go down the proprietary client download route, and not (as Hulu and YouTube did)…

I’m glad I’m not a full-time political activist, and just an armchair one instead, because I’d be beyond cynical by now if I were. As it is, today’s announcement that the UK will adopt the “three strikes” policy to copyright infringement leaves me merely livid. Livid that such a bone-headed, technically illiterate policy is being…

If I forward an email from my MP to a local news outlet without that MP’s written permission, that’s an infringement of Crown Copyright. I copy and paste some text from an online newspaper article. That’s probably an infraction of their terms and conditions. If I take a video of my son with a couple…

I’ve just been reading Lily Allen’s blog. For those not following such groovy things as closely as I do, she has recently decided that Piracy (she gives it a capital pee), is bad. So bad in fact that it is destroying lots of jobs and stifling new talent because those poor music executives won’t be…

I feel that the end is surely coming for The Pirate Bay now. The recent outage, although only 3 hours long, brought about the action of a Swedish court order against TPB’s upstream ISP, will probably turn out so be one of the first of an increasing number of cuts. Still, I like their Churchillian…

Today’s news from Tinsel Town is that the heirs of J R R Tolkien and the charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, are seeking more than $220 million in “compensation” from New Line Cinema as a cut from the huge profits from the Lord of the Rings films. The family say have a right to…

First, let me say that I have nothing to hide. Well – I wouldn’t want random strangers looking at my bank statements. Medical records would also be private (although I’m sure I’d put a brave face on any public revelations). Where my kids are is also off-limits. I won’t tell you how much tax I…

So, jail terms for the Pirates of Pirate Bay. “Judge Tomas Norstrom told reporters that the court took into account that the site was “commercially driven” when it made the ruling.” Commercially driven? What then, your honour, is the difference between Google, and The Pirate Bay? Yes, you could outlaw all trackers, but that’s not…

Hello? Can you hear me? This might sound boring – a technicality. It involves industrial regulation, copyright and law. But it’s important, and we should all be at least concerned, if not angry, about what is now happening in the European parliament. What is more, time is running out and we need to act now.…

So I’ve been asking my MEPs what their position is on the proposed EU extension of copyright term in sound recordings. The motion, as  currently tabled, calls for copyright to be extended from its current 50 year term to as much as 75 years plus the life of the artist. I am in strong opposition…

Let’s hope the march of paid lobbyists and other industry schills in Europe will be stopped by these clear and concise arguments against extending copyright in sound recordings. It’s rare that politicians don’t take the side of big business, but when the pandering to greed and the destruction of the public domain is this blatant,…

Phew. I’ve just got out from a large amount of IRC and email about this and this bug on Wikimedia. As of about midnight this evening, it’s boiled down to what seems like (at worst) some over-zealous censorship by the IWF which has now been corrected. I spent a while hanging out on Be Internet’s…

…nager from London became a millionaire without having a record deal or any commercial airplay; how hip-hop came to be the ultimate commercialised youth culture by maintaining a lucrative stasis of “being real” while managing to funnel large amounts of money to a small amount of people, and so on. Nor does Mason seem to mind losing his way in this. At one point, an entire chapter (“Real Talk”) takes a detour into the biographies of assorted hip-hop…

Apple have threatened iTunes-listening Britons with the closure of their iTunes store. I think this is unlikely to happen, but if it does then the P2P networks will get rather more traffic, thereby providing even more proof that the publishing industry just doesn’t understand what’s happening. Every time they try to throw their weight around…

Michael Forrest has his new album out today. I’m downloading it now, and I commend you to do the same. It reminds me of artists as diverse as Cobra Killer through ATR to Momus and Barry Adamson. This is definitely going out on my ShowCenter. I’m always interested in the way artists choose to distribute…

Argh! The reform of the “European law on electronic communications” (AKA the “Telecoms Package”) will be debated in the European Parliament on 7th July – Monday! Why the sudden flap? Well, it seems they’re at it again. Here’s what’s going on: take one, large, boring piece of regulatory legislation up for routine amends that most…

I’ve recently read We-Think by Charles Leadbeater, having attended one of his talks a couple of months ago. I thought I’d record my thoughts on it. Books about the socio-political or cultural effects of the Internet are rolling fast off the presses right now. I’m now feeling a little less like the pallid geek I…

It’s out! Not seen it yet, but I’ll be downloading as soon as I get out of the bath. In case you’ve not been following – Big Buck Bunny is a feature-length 3D animation – and this is what makes it special. Do them a favour and download it (preferably by BitTorrent if you can).

In my dreams, I like to think that if I ever made a lot of money I would be like Joi Ito. He must rank as one of the most worthwhile people on the planet, and somebody that I’d love to meet. Today, he writes an astute post about the “mobile Internet” and why nothing…

My ongoing experience with Tiscali’s appalling broadband offering has made me research the overall broadband industry in the UK. The picture is now becoming alarmingly ugly. Something has to happen to avert a disaster, and that something may be local networks. But before I elaborate on the solution (although not a new idea), let me…

I don’t watch nearly enough films, but my attention has been drawn to two animations recently. Both are free. Firstly, the Blender project has brought out a new film (I wanted to embed it here but it breaks the page). It has a CC licence, and looks like an impressive bit of 3D animation (all…

A friend of mine recently said they thought ID cards could be useful. They said they thought one day they might forget to take their passport to the airport or on the Eurostar. It struck me that I’d not blogged about my thoughts on this (and hey, what’s a blog for if it’s not for…

The two things that have most irked me about many devices I’ve owned is response time and shoddy UI. Usually, I assume there’s not much the manufacturer can do about response time, so I’m pretty forgiving on that point. But shoddy UI is another matter. Mobile phone UIs have of course been done to death…

I see this news from France last week. It’s an interesting innovation in the copyfight, but it’ll be a flop. With margins already wafer-thin, ISPs will be reluctant to ban their customers, and those that do will be removing people who will be clever enough to get round the bans. However, it’s measures like this…

When I’m murdered in my bed by a gang of bored teenagers, I’ll try to remember to blame the RIAA as I expire. Some issues are too big to arrive at any useful perspective until you have thought and experienced a great many ideas relating to them. For a long while now, I have tried…

I am usually completely unsuccessful in hiding my glee at the demise of music publishers, and this post is no exception. I have been hoping for the last few years that what started as a trickle would become a flood. And now with Radiohead and even (gasp!) Madonna, it surely has. I think the penny…

Max Hole is President, Asia Pacific Region and Executive Vice-President, Marketing and A&R for Universal Music Group International. He has some soothing words for anyone who thinks the internets might be a bit worrying for music publishers. When he’s using words like “… record companies … sign and encourage great music by great artists. This…

The UK government has rejected calls to extend the length of copyright on sound recordings beyond 50 years. This is the first time any government in the history of the world has refused to extend copyright, and it’s great news. 50 years is of course far, far too long, but at least the madness of…

If you want to know what company directors think about how the government in this country works, look no further than this flabbergasting statement by Paul Birch of Revolver Records: “I … think allowing indiscriminate criticism of the RIAA is inappropriate for a Government funded institution” At least in terms of editorial integrity, if you…

I will not be buying shares in Joost any time soon. This is not because they don’t have a good product – having been on their beta testing swarm for the last few months, I think it’s quite nice really. The trouble is, according to the Guardian they will be getting their content from media…

So the BBC is now the latest broadcaster to sign a deal with the force that is YouTube. Right now, the Beeb (and CBS, NBC and Fox) are all saying that YouTube is a “promotional vehicle” for them. Nothing to do with their core programming or anything like that. OK, and what about all those…

Most people don’t know that under UK law, it is currently illegal to copy music from (say) a CD you have bought, to your own MP3 or other music player. As a result of a petition to Downing Street organised the Open Rights Group, the government has responded positively to the suggestion that we should perhaps not be thrown in prison for making copies of stuff that we own. “As you may be aware, in December 2005 the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announc…

…/27_revelation/ Similarly, Spank’s Version 2 (MP3, 1.3Mb) is great. http://www.unity303.com/mp3/ In the words of John Peel: I’m just glad I’ve lived long enough to hear this stuff. It all obviously raises some copyright questions: by finding this stuff and listening to it, am I committing theft? I believe the clips here are fair use under UK copyright law at least – and I would assume the artists (if not their copyright holders) would be fine with…

I don’t read the Guardian much these days, but I’ve always known it as a broadsheet with a sense of humour. Their printing today of this article, “written” by Mick Hucknall, and the inevitable comments about it on line, must be one of the funniest online occurrences this year. Hucknall (oh OK, it’s some music…

…e was worried that Google had all this information about you that could be searched for by anyone, and did this not raise issues about the control of information and was it all not a bit worrying? This amazing display of technical ignorance, on a par at least with American politicians, would have been surprising enough were is not for the fact that at a previous event I attended one of the panelists (a Society of Authors muchkin I think) started r…

…ke down its juke box service. The BBC article above mentions that AllofMP3.com’s UK market share of online downloads is estimated as being 14%. Rise or fall now? I wonder. The Pirate Bay seems to be struggling to cope with demand after it’s little run-in with the US, er, Swedish police – and it accounted for almost half of Sweden’s entire bandwidth usage before the take down! I think we’re now firmly establishing a pattern that’s clearly unsustain…

…mainly because if the USA has its way, then the site may be taken down in preparation for Russia’s entry into the WTO. If you’ve not been there before, AllofMP3 is everything you ever wanted from Internet age commerce: dirt cheap goods sold legally (according to Russian jurisdiction), massive choice and as a finishing touch, stunning typos. Not surprisingly, a whole album for a dollar (or any combination of tracks you like) has been making the RI…

…I commend you today to the “articles” section in the top right nav, where I humbly offer for your most worthy attention a treatise entitled “When the Internet is Gone.” It’s a load of rubbish, obviously, but it was fun to write. I’ll tighten up the bit about fall of the Rupee a bit later maybe….

The absurdity of UK government agencies having to sell data back the very tax payers that paid for it has been going on ever since I was a lad. I’ve always regarded it as another one of the breathtakingly stupid things the Thatcher government did that, once done, could not be un-done. Like football hooliganism, chaotic public transport and the poll (now council) tax.

But the Grauniad’s now come up with an interesting angle – and a campaign no less – that holds out the possibility of change.

(By the way, I love that Guardian Technology masthead with the picture of Admiral Tojo wearing 3D glasses on it. It’s a classic.)

I went to see Cory Doctorow and others on a panel organised by Free Culture UK last night. The subject was “Open Content” – a moniker given to the concept of digitisable works of either art or craft distributed under an alternative copyright licence (such as Creative Commons). Inevitably, a lot of ground was covered by the speakers, and one of the hottest topics of the evening was the recently-launched BBC’s Open Archive project. I wasn’t actually aware that they’d launched, but it sounds evil.

…I’m always late in on things, and this is no exception. But I’ve just put up a Shoutcast stream of the American Edit mashup tracks. First time I’ve done this, so hope it works. For a day or so anyway……

Of course it’s too early to say, but I’d like to think that this is the beginning of the end for the music publishing industry. The terrible signal: too weak to even recognise…

Unless you’re Madonna, Coldplay or U2, chances are that you’re 
not going to make money selling records. 

So let’s try something different here.

…he very least you should understand what the issues are. For example: http://www.eff.org/IP/DRM/?f=fair_use_and_drm.html http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_1/kretschmer/ http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003214.html http://www.commonhouse.net/wiki/drm/FrontPage You might like to ask the sponsors about these issues, and if you do, to relay these to your members. As you can see, no attempt at moderation was attempted. Expected reply statu…