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Copyright extension of 45 years to net just $40 for most performers
,----[ Quote ]
| As with Congress and Disney, the EU's proposed 45-year extension would make
| the rich richer, and would perhaps put roughly 30 Euros per year in most
| artists' pockets. It's a terrible idea with limited benefit for its intended
| beneficiaries, and huge detriment to the public and would-be artists growing
| up in the shadows of today's artists.
|
| If the EU wants to baby artists, set up a pension plan for them. Coddle them
| with milque toast in their old age. Do something. Just don't extend copyright
| terms. That helps few and hurts many.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10036087-16.html
PLAYER PIANO ROLLS
,----[ Quote ]
| Maddog finds out that copyright prevents preserving paper player piano rolls.
`----
http://www.linux-magazine.com/issues/2008/95/player_piano_rolls
Legal digital music is commercial suicide
,----[ Quote ]
| Lala, for those who don't know, is a free streaming music venture. Invested
| in by Warner Music group to the tune of $20m it streams about five million
| songs, but also offers 89 cent MP3 sales, and song rentals for 10 cents each.
| But why is almost nobody using their well-designed, expansive, free streaming
| service?
|
| I'm not talking about the song rentals for 10 cents - we all knew that was a
| non-starter. But people aren't streaming songs even for free. While Imeem is
| streaming more than 1m sessions per day, on Lala only 25 daily listens will
| get your song into the weekly Top 10. The service just isn't attracting users
| at all, in spite of the marketing major label WMG has committed to do. Lala
| appears to be just another in a long list of industry endorsed companies that
| tries to make the labels happy - and in so doing, apparently forfeits its
| chance to build a user base or a business.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/09/michael_robertson_music_models/
Copyright row dogs Spore release
,----[ Quote ]
| DRM is used to combat piracy and protect copyright, but players of Spore
| complained that this meant the game was "for rent, not sale".
|
| "The DRM on this thing is less friendly than my recent colonoscopy - you get
| three installs. That's it. No install returned for uninstallation, or
| anything else," wrote one reviewer.
`----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7604405.stm
Recent:
Commission adviser accuses Barroso of intentionally misleading European
policy-makers and citizens on copyright
,----[ Quote]
| When the European Commission put forward their proposal to retrospectively
| extend the copyright term granted to sound recordings, locking away vast
| swathes of our cultural heritage in a commercial vacuum for 45 years, it was
| clear that they had rejected all the expert evidence in favour of voodoo
| economics.
|
| Now Professor Bernt Hugenholtz has written a letter to Commission President
| Jose Manuel Barroso asking why. Huggenholtz, Director of the Institute for
| Information Law (IViR), which was tasked by the European Commission to look
| into the arguments for and against extending copyright term, says his team
| were “surprised” to discover that their studies had been completely ignored,
| and that statements the Commission have made that “there was no need for
| external expertise” in drafting the proposal were “patently untrue”.
`----
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/08/21/commission-adviser-accuses-barroso-of-intentionally-misleading-european-policy-makers-and-citizens-on-copyright/
EC proposes overhaul of patents and industrial rights
,----[ Quote ]
| The European Commission has proposed creating a single strategy for the
| protection of industrial property rights in Europe. The Commission wants to
| integrate its strategy for industrial property rights and encourage smaller
| businesses to protect rights.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/30/ec_industrial_rights_proposal/
Extension of sound recordings and performers’ rights: an issue of fairness
,----[ Quote ]
| In setting up the rationalist background of his title, Professor Bently noted
| that the 2004 EC Staff Working Paper, the Gowers Report, and the
| EC-commissioned IVIR report had all approached the question rationally, with
| evidence-based and economic reasoning. Each had come out against extension.
`----
http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2008/07/extension-of-sound-recordings-and.html
Term Extension “will damage Commission’s reputation”, top legal advisers tell
Barroso
,----[ Quote ]
| Today, the leading European centres for intellectual property research have
| released a joint letter to EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso,
| enclosing an impact assessment detailing the far reaching and negative
| effects of the proposal to extend the term of copyright in sound recordings.
| [...] “This Copyright Extension Directive, proposed by Commissioner Mccreevy,
| is likely to damage seriously the reputation of the Commission..."
`----
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/06/18/term-extension-will-damage-commissions-reputation-top-legal-advisers-tell-barroso/
What copyright costs us
,----[ Quote ]
| We have extended copyright terms to the point of inanity--competition moves
| ever faster, to the point that technology copyrights and patents seem to be
| measured in decades. And then there is patent law, home of a widening array
| of specious, obvious patents.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10006829-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
End of the Blog
,----[ Quote ]
| I have decided to end the blog, after doing around 800 postings over about 4
| years.
|
| [...]
|
| 2. The Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing
|
| This leads me to my final reason for closing the blog which is independent of
| the first reason: my fear that the blog was becoming too negative in tone. I
| regard myself as a centrist. I believe very much that in proper doses
| copyright is essential for certain classes of works, especially commercial
| movies, commercial sound recordings, and commercial books, the core copyright
| industries. I accept that the level of proper doses will vary from person to
| person and that my recommended dose may be lower (or higher) than others. But
| in my view, and that of my cherished brother Sir Hugh Laddie, we are well
| past the healthy dose stage and into the serious illness stage. Much like the
| U.S. economy, things are getting worse, not better. Copyright law has
| abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new
| works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed
| business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to
| obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only
| causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like
| Humpty-Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back
| together again: multilateral and trade agreements have ensured that, and
| quite deliberately.
`----
http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/end-of-blog.html
What if copyright didn't apply to binary executables?
,----[ Quote ]
| So why’d they do it? Well, the short answer is because the copyright office
| listened to software publishers, and they wanted binaries protected by
| copyright so they could sell them that way. The only other alternatives were
| to rely on patents (which the patent office had rejected at the time, and
| which were not a very popular idea in the industry back then), and to simply
| rely on the obfuscation which comes naturally to binary code (which is not
| optimized for human readability).
|
| Consider what would’ve happened if binaries weren’t copyrightable. Then, a
| software company, which distributed binaries would have no copyright
| protection for what they sold. And, like manufacturers of household
| appliances, they would have no legal recourse against people reverse
| engineering their products and designing replacements for them. Nor could
| they bind people into “End User License Agreements” (EULAs), any more than
| people who sell hammers can. Proprietary source code, would of course, still
| be kept a closely-guarded secret, just as it is under the current scheme.
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/what_if_copyright_didnt_apply_binary_executables
British Government Violates Copyright
,----[ Quote ]
| As much as I utterly despise the entire premise of Intellectual Monopoly,
| this is about violating the principles of a Free License, and if it's good
| enough for the British government to violate our civil rights in the name of
| Intellectual Monopoly, then it's good enough for the Free World to protect
| its "property" (in fact Freedom) too…
`----
http://slated.org/british_government_violates_copyright
Open sourcing can tackle software piracy
,----[ Quote ]
| Adoption of Open Source Software (OSS) as an alternative to copyrighted
| products is seen as a promising solution to software piracy in developing
| countries like Kenya.
|
| [...]
|
| The Central Bank of India has saved over $1 million after it opted for open
| source software two years ago, according to the website of Redhat, an open
| source software developer.
`----
http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6718&Itemid=5847
US presidential candidate is a pirate
,----[ Quote ]
| THE PRESUMED Republican US presidential candidate John McCain favours
| draconian copyright enforcement, except when his own election campaign uses
| other people's music.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/16/gop-presidential-candidate
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