Category: Copyright

The recording industry should thank Apple | Digital Noise: Music & Tech – CNET Blogs

This post over at C-Net reminded me of a thought I had the other day:

From a computer-conscious music fans perspective, it appears that the labels purposely crippled their early digital efforts in hopes that their lawsuits would succeed, the genie would be put back into the bottle, and they could forget about this annoying Interwebs thing and go back to selling plastic discs with ridiculously high margins.

Now, Universal is going after Apple, complaining that its success with iTunes has given it too much power.

Compare this to the statement of the head of the head of litigation at Sony BMG during the Thomas trial:

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’,” she said.

I wouldn’t expect everyone in the industry to share the same perspectives on the issue, but it sounds to me as though they would prefer that mp3 players go away so we would all go back to carrying bulky CD players. The mp3 format and players are clearly here to stay–what will it take for the industry to come up with a response that acknowledges this fact?

New bill would punish colleges, students who dont become copyright cops

Ars posts a good summary of the bill I mentioned the other day.

What has been bothering me about this one is the question: why colleges? The only reasonable answer I can come up with is that they are service providers to a discrete population of younger savvier users who (one might think) would be more likely to infringe.

Yet, is this any basis for legislating against them? Armed robberies (I am guessing) might be carried out to a higher degree by lower income folks, but we do not pass gun control laws that specifically target this population. We know that there are probably a host of other factors that go into this correlation (things like financial need, desperation, and mental illness).

It seems to me that some of the factors at play here, other than being “at college,” is that the population is younger, more likely to have a computer, and is more likely to have an interest in many types of media. Under these same factors, we might require a dot-com company that provides internet access to follow the same rules outlined in this bill.

Democrats: Colleges must police copyright, or else | CNET News.com

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also “alternatives” to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

With colleges feeling the financial pinch, some so hard that they are unable to provide services like blogs and wikis that might have immediate instructional benefits, one wonders what will be sacrificed to pay for media subscriptions.

Here’s an amazing story about new efforts by the Copyright Society of the USA to educate children on the law of copyright and fair use.

The Patry Copyright Blog: Kopyright and Kids Continued

Aside from inaccuracies about fair use, what is most concerning to me is the potential for something like this to stifle young creativity. I’m of the opinion that learning often requires one to copy something they like and build upon it. I’d say this is how garage bands, painters, writers, and all future artists find their voice.

On the other hand, the effects of this might depend on the actual content of the educational materials. For example, the Society’s kids page on “registering your own works” states:

Under the current U.S. copyright laws, copyright protection is secured automatically when the work is “fixed” — meaning when it is created and fixed in a tangible form and can be seen, reproduced or otherwise communicated for more than a transitory or temporary time.

What kid (or non-lawyer for that matter) talks like this, anyway?