Mighty Buzzard's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week

from the short-and-sweet dept

It's been a heck of a busy month or two for copyright. We've had SOPA and PIPA. We've had the organization of a grassroots campaign against them. We had a significant number of serious heavyweights of the Internet join in. And now we have nations around Europe bailing on ACTA over protests of their citizens.

My question is, why? Why do we have to see stories like this:

Over 70 different groups, including many who were central to the January 18th online protests against SOPA, have put together a letter asking Congress to put a halt to any attempts to further expand intellectual property laws.

The movie industry has one main lobby that they can put all their weight behind. So does the recording industry. Why don't we have one?

And why are these yahoos still supporting bills that they know are poison? I thought they were supposed to be realizing that it wasn't Google lobbying that stopped SOPA/PIPA.

Anyway, those aren't necessarily my favorite Techdirt stories of the week but they are the ones that made me think the most. I consider that a bigger win than a good chuckle or a burn on Righthaven.

50 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Iranian Filmmaker Banned From Filmmaking... Makes Documentary Via His iPhone About His Plight

from the necessity-is-the-mother... dept

A little over a year ago, I asked how long it would be until we had a full, professional quality feature film filmed entirely with smartphones. This one doesn't completely qualify, but it is quite interesting. Ross Pruden points our attention to the story of This Is Not A Film, the documentary from widely respected Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The story behind this film is pretty crazy. Basically, Panahi was arrested and given a six-year sentence in prison, while also being barred from making films for 20 years. While he appealed the sentence, he was apparently able to remain in his Tehran apartment under house arrest... and decided to document his life as he dealt with this situation by filming it, often using iPhones to capture scenes (though not entirely). The film has been shown at various film festivals, but is hitting US theaters starting February 29th, and the trailer recently came out:

Apparently the film itself was smuggled out of Iran to Cannes by putting it on a USB key, and then baking that USB key into a cake that was shipped out of the country. In all the news coverage of this film, I haven't seen anything about how the Iranian government reacted to this film, which they must know about by now.

Either way, there's something of a statement being made here about the power of smartphone cameras these days. It really was just a few years ago that the idea of mixing cameras with phones was widely panned as a dumb idea. And now they're helping internationally renowned filmmakers who are being censored and persecuted to keep making their art. It also says something about the need for some creators to keep making their art, no matter what the challenges to doing so. That's really amazing.

Also, it starts to lead you down the path to rethinking questions about censorship and free speech limitations. Obviously, banning someone from making a film is a form of censorship and an infringement on free speech rights. And, of course, Iran does not have a particularly good reputation on free speech issues. But technology changes things. When "making a film" is as easy as clicking a button on the phone you carry at all times, it changes the equation. "Making a film" is no longer "making a film." It's just something you and anyone else can do at any time. When that happens, the very concept of banning someone from making a film... just seems silly.

52 Comments | Leave a Comment..

TuneCore: RIAA Has Become A Part Of The Problem For Artists

from the indeed dept

For many years, I've used TuneCore as one of the key examples of the new generation of middlemen who served as enablers rather than gatekeepers for artists. The company has a clear record of really helping tons and tons of artists make money from their music in ways that were entirely impossible for most of those artists previously. It's a true success story. That's why I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed in late 2010 when TuneCore's CEO Jeff Price came out in favor of COICA, the problematic predecessor to SOPA and PIPA. Thankfully, since then it appears he's realized the error of his ways.

Beyond his continually awesome series of posts providing tons and tons of useful data that the legacy recording industry has totally ignored, he's written a brilliant response to Cary Sherman's NYT op-ed that we've been discussing. Price points out that the real disinformation campaign has been from the RIAA, and the key point is that the RIAA does not represent artists, but rather it represents the major labels, who very frequently have agendas that are at odds with artists:

The RIAA has become part of the problem of protecting copyright due to its occasional less than honest approach to things.  You just can’t take what the RIAA says at face value as their agenda is not clear—is it to protect copyright or is it to protect the interests of its label members at any cost?

After all, this is the same organization that had the RIAA employee Mitch Glazer attempt to sneak language into a bill on Capitol Hill changing the definition of “work for hire,” depriving artists of their rights (there’s a great article about this in the Austin Chronicle).

Now add to this that as the RIAA demands that its label members’ copyrights be respected and properly compensated, its members have knowingly taken hundreds of millions of dollars of other peoples’ songwriter royalties over the past few years.  Knowingly taking money generated from the copyrights of others—aka “Black Box Money”—sounds eerily like stealing.

Furthermore, he notes that the RIAA's strategy here now puts it at odds with what's actually best for musicians. He goes on to point out that SOPA/PIPA in their original forms might have actually been the end of a service like TuneCore:

However, if the original SOPA and PIPA bills were passed years ago, TuneCore most likely would not have existed, and power would still be concentrated with the old regime; they would have found a way to slow the market shift away from them. In the guise of “protecting copyright” the original SOPA bill would have provided the RIAA unilateral and almost unchecked power to kill the new emerging industry.

All the RIAA would have had to do is claim that music distributed by TuneCore was infringing on its label members’ copyrights. With limited to no due process, TuneCore could have been shut down just like Dajaz1.

And I can assure you, from time to time TuneCore gets illegitimate and wrongful claims of infringement by the RIAA (and some of its label members).

No matter how much the legacy players in the industry want to claim that it was "just Google" that helped kill the bill, there's simply no way anyone can credibly claim that TuneCore is a Google puppet. In fact, I think it's clear that TuneCore has been one of the most useful tools out there for getting artists paid. And it's coming out strongly against the RIAA on this one, highlighting the key point that too often gets lost in this debate. The RIAA represents the gatekeepers, not the artists. This has never been about protecting content. It's always been about protecting gatekeepers.

52 Comments | Leave a Comment..

If Google Is Serious About Reforming Patent Mess, It Should Make A Bold Statement And Stop Using Motorola Patents To Demand Cash

from the now's-the-chance dept

We've discussed in the past the fact that Google has never used patents offensively. That is, while it has many patents, it has never (that anyone can point to) used them to threaten another company to force them to pay up. Instead, it has only used them defensively. Over the summer, Google got even more aggressive, speaking out about how patents had become a tax on innovation, rather than enabling innovation. In fact, we pointed out that Google actually seemed to be a perfect example of how innovative companies didn't need to be aggressive on patents -- a feeling that is pretty strong in the Valley.

Of course, about a week later, Google bought Motorola Mobility, almost entirely for its large patent portfolio. Given Google's outspoken viewpoint on patents, the assumption was that the company would continue to use those patents defensively against the increasing number of attacks by patent holders on Google. However, as MG Siegler is reporting, it looks like Google might at least continue Motorola's patent strategy post acquisition (which is about to be approved):

Google is saying that they don’t plan on making any changes to the way Motorola was enforcing their patent pool. This presumably means, among other things, they’ll now be suing Apple and trying to block the iPhone from being sold in certain countries.

This also presumably means they’ll be suing Microsoft and trying to bring down the H.264 video codec — which, by the way, Google created a competitor to (WebM) out of fear that someone would come along one day and try to enforce patents that would kill the H.264 video codec.

How’s that for a mind fuck?

The tables have gotten so turned that it’s now Apple and Microsoft who are complaining about patent enforcement. Specifically, both want assurances that patents licensed under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, are actually just that — fair.

In Motorola’s eyes, “fair” is Apple paying 2.25 percent on each iPhone and iPad sold. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD did the math: this would mean Apple paying about a billion dollars a year in royalty fees to Motorola.

A billion dollars. The mobile unit that Google is buying lost $285 million for the year last year. Apple would be indirectly keeping them, a competitor, afloat.

Of course, with some of these, the lawsuits are well underway, but Google could seek to dismiss some of the lawsuits if it wanted to. I think Siegler goes a bit far in claiming that Google automatically becomes "the villain" for gaining control over offensive patent moves that it's inheriting with this purchase. The bigger question will be what Google does going forward. However, if Google really does want to send a larger message around patents, it will get itself out of those efforts pretty quickly once taking over the company, reinforcing that the larger picture is more important than being able to extract a tax on competing products.

Of course, there is one other thing that makes this a bit more complicated, which I think Siegler ignores. He mentions how Google had to "make assurances that they would act fairly with patents they were acquiring." But he doesn't quite highlight the possible significance of that statement. If Google does get itself out of some of these lawsuits, and then chooses either to not enforce its patents against others or (better yet!) to freely license its patents to many other players, how long would it take Google's competitors to claim that Google was somehow "unfairly" using the patents to its advantage by giving them away for "free." Google competitors have used Google's free services as a stick against Google in the past, pretending that this meant they were abusing their position. I could definitely see some sneaky and ridiculous legal argument that if Google isn't making companies pay up for its newly acquired patents that it's unfairly abusing its position. This is, of course, a ridiculously stupid argument, but it's the nature of the world these days, where aggressive IP enforcement is seen as the norm.

Either way, I hope that Google stands by its words from last summer and is quick to extricate itself from offensive patent situations. But we'll find out soon.

32 Comments | Leave a Comment..

DailyDirt: Edible Clothing

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Generally, people try to keep food from dropping on their clothes and making a mess. But some fashion designers can't seem to keep from trying to make food items into something wearable. Here are just a few kinda nutty examples.

• The fad of molecular gastronomy has been crossed with handmade fashion accessories -- creating some wearable items that aren't too far from looking like marshmallow Peeps. These creations will be excellent garnish recipes for the "To Serve Man" cookbooks. [url]
• Denim isn't actually too easy to digest for most people, but scratch-and-sniff jeans could make some folks want to try a bite. The scent-filled denim could be fruit-flavored -- or possibly made to smell like Teen Spirit/bodysprays/etc. [url]
• Making clothes from edible pastry wrappers isn't just for kinky lingerie. Wearing fruit roll-ups doesn't sound too appealing for many situations, though... [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

8 Comments | Leave a Comment..

It's Time To Let Politicians Know That Using Secretive Trade Agreements To Meddle With The Internet Is Unacceptable

from the speak-up,-speak-out dept

Last week, we noted how the anti-SOPA protest had woken up people around the globe to one of the legacy content industry's favorite tricks: sneaking dreadful IP expansionist policies through international trade agreements. In particular, it woke people up to ACTA, an agreement that was basically a done deal, and already signed by many of the participants. But now there's a fight on in Europe over whether or not it will really get ratified -- and it all comes down to whether or not the EU Parliament moves forward. And even while some are wondering if it's dead and superpowers like Germany are appearing to at least have some level of second thoughts over the plan... it's still moving forward.

As we had mentioned, a ton of plans for in-person protests had sprung up across Europe, and most of those are happening tomorrow. Reports are coming in about how these protests are really having an impact, and many people are hoping to ramp up the pressure with the protests tomorrow.

If you want to see where the local protest are being held, the folks over at Access have a great summary page, and Fight for the Future -- who was instrumental in organizing the anti-SOPA blackouts -- has set up KillActa.org to make it easier to speak out against ACTA as well. Who knows if ACTA can really be stopped, but it's really amazing to see so many people speaking out against these agreements. International trade agreements are considered boring and rarely do people pay attention to them (outside of big "free trade" agreements that set off certain groups). But to see so many people learning about how these deals sneak in dangerous provisions, it suggests that perhaps we can finally convince politicians that mucking with the internet solely for special interests -- and doing it through totally secretive processes -- is simply not acceptable any more.

27 Comments | Leave a Comment..

'The Economist' And 'Financial Times' Already Writing Off ACTA As Dead

from the let's-put-it-out-of-its-misery dept

In the last few days, we've seen an extraordinary wave of announcements by governments in Europe, particularly its eastern part, that they would not be ratifying ACTA immediately. That sequence of events, culminating in today's news that Germany, too, would be holding off, has suddenly made lots of people sit up and take notice.

But even against that tumultuous background, few of us would have expected that two of the most serious business publications in Europe, The Economist and Financial Times, would both go much further than simply noting the problems the treaty now faces, and declare that ACTA is pretty much dead.

Under the headline "ACTA up", The Economist says: "Protests across Europe may kill an anti-piracy treaty", and points out: "Internet activists used to be dismissed as a bunch of hairy mouse-clickers with little clout. Not any more."

The Financial Times' headline is "Latest pact on internet piracy set to be derailed", and the post makes an explicit connection with SOPA and PIPA:

A controversial international trade agreement, which campaigners fear would restrict internet freedom looks likely to be delayed or scrapped, the latest in a string of measures planned to combat online piracy to falter in the face of co-ordinated protests.

It also offers some interesting thoughts on why the ACTA revolt has been so strong in eastern Europe:

The issue has stirred up deep passions there, where access to the internet is seen as one of the rewards of belonging to a democratic society. Illegal downloading is also popular, in part because those societies are poorer than those in western Europe, and in part because many content providers have made it difficult for central Europeans to buy music and films legally online.

Finally, it has a fascinating comment from David Martin, the new European Parliament rapporteur on ACTA, who took over after Kader Arif resigned in protest at the way ACTA had been negotiated. Martin says he wants to "canvas views broadly", and to get an opinion from the European Court of Justice on whether ACTA is compatible with the European Union's current laws. As result of this approach, he says:

"Realistically, if we go down this route we are looking at a vote in the spring of 2013," he warns.

The FT quotes an unnamed diplomat who suggests that this delay may "give enough time for the post-SOPA venom to clear," so that governments can quietly ratify ACTA in their national parliaments and in Brussels next year. It sounds like a clever ploy -- let protesters tire themselves out, then push through ACTA -- but on the basis of the strength of feeling that's manifested itself in Europe recently, I wouldn't bet on it working.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

22 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Lithuanian Minister Of Justice Says ACTA Is Unnecessary, Doesn't Actually Help Creators And It's Time To Reevaluate IP

from the nicely-said dept

Here's yet another example of a European official speaking out against ACTA. However, unlike in many other countries, where it appears to be politicians merely pushing back on public backlash, and urging caution and public review, the Lithuanian Justice Minister, Remigijus Simasius, has completely condemned ACTA and said that it should lead to a wholesale re-evaluation of IP rights system itself.

The essence of my comment was that certain provisions of ACTA are new to our legal system (more severe punishment, more control of internet providing services) and I do not see why those provisions are necessary.

I have also stated that our life is more and more dependent on R&D, new inventions, creativity. Existing IP protection system, however, is more about protecting the IP protection industry than a protection of inventors and authors. Current debate worldwide is a clear sign that we have to re-evaluate the existing IP rights system.

While it'll be interesting to see how far all of this goes, it's quite notable just how much backlash the SOPA overreach is suddenly creating -- where all sorts of skepticism about existing copyright law is suddenly coming out in more mainstream places.

22 Comments | Leave a Comment..

One Reason Why The USPTO Granted Ridiculously Stupid Internet Patents: Patent Examiners Were Banned From Using The Internet

from the wtf dept

We already reported on the surprising but good news ruling out of East Texas, that Eolas' crazy patents were judged invalid by the jury. However, Alex Howard's writeup about the ruling includes a crazy tidbit that came out during the short trial that deserves separate attention:

One interesting detail that emerged in the case was that the U.S. Patent Office didn't have access to the Internet in 1994 and was apparently forbidden from going on the Internet in 1997, which would make research into prior art in cyberspace somewhat of a challenge.

I'm not sure I'd use "interesting" as the adjective there. More like insane. I mean, it's pretty well-known that many patent examiners focused solely on other patents or journal articles as the key sources of prior art, rather than what was actually happening in the field, but being forbidden from going online is just crazy. Luckily for the internet, this was still a time period when most tech companies believed that software wasn't patentable -- something that changed the following year when the ridiculous State Street ruling opened the floodgates. While certainly some really bad patents (like Eolas') made it through, just think how much worse things would have been if there were as many internet/software patent filings from 1990 to 1998 as there were after 98.

78 Comments | Leave a Comment..

How Much Of The Collapse Of Recorded Music Sales Revenue Was Due To The End Of Illegal Price Fixing?

from the just-saying.. dept

Harold Feld has made a very important point that has been totally ignored in the debate over the state of the recorded music business. In Cary Sherman's diatribe about how the evil tech industry is destroying the music industry, not only does he pretend that recorded music is representative of the wider music industry's situation (it's not... at all), but he seems to have carefully chosen the date of 1999 as his starting point for the supposed "collapse." Why? Because in 1999 the major record labels (i.e., exactly who the RIAA represents) were charged with illegal price fixing... a practice they then agreed to cease. And, of course, when you stop price fixing, generally speaking your revenue goes down:

This is important because in 1999, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the major labels were engaged in an illegal price fixing scheme. The major labels agreed to discontinue their price-fixing practices as part of settlement decree in May 2000. Not surprisingly, once the major labels stopped violating antitrust law, their artificially inflated profits declined and independent competitors saw a significant rise in profits.

This is a pretty important point. The "high point" for recorded music sales was completely artificial, not just because of a "legal" monopoly right, but because of illegal antitrust activities in the form of price fixing.

40 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Schrödinger's Download: Whether Or Not An iTunes Music Sale Is A 'Sale' Depends On Who's Suing

from the that-cat-is-dead dept

Steve Worona has a great post pointing out how the record labels have clear cognitive dissonance (the ability to hold two totally conflicting ideas in your head at the same time -- and argue for both of them) when it comes to the question of whether or not an iTunes purchase represents a "sale." He puts forth three examples of such cognitive dissonance in the legal context, with the final one being taken from two recent legal cases involving major record labels:

Example 1, the case of the kettle. As summarized by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, “Readers who’ve been to law school may remember the chestnut known as the ‘Case of the Kettle’. A man is charged with borrowing a kettle and breaking it. His reply is that, first, he never borrowed it; second, it was already broken when he borrowed it; third, it was intact when he returned it.”

Example 2, the case of the dog. Paraphrasing from a 1978 Wall Street Journal article about well-known Texas defense attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes: You say my dog bit you, but I don’t own a dog, and he doesn’t bite, and you kicked him first.

Example 3, digital downloads. Two recent court cases hinge on how the sale of an MP3 download compares to the sale of a conventional physical recording, known as a “phonorecord” in Copyright-speak. In one case, the singer Eminem demanded that Universal Music Group calculate his royalties for downloads based on the higher rate for licensed material instead of the lower rate for phonorecord sales. UMG refused, arguing that the sale of an MP3 download was the same as a phonorecord sale. In the second case, EMI filed suit against ReDigi, a company that allows purchasers of MP3 downloads to resell those files under Copyright law’s “first sale” doctrine. EMI argued that the MP3 files were not phonorecords and thus not subject to first sale.

What's being discussed here, of course, are two cases that we've covered. The Eminem case involved whether or not an iTunes purchase counted as a "sale" like a CD, where there was a very low royalty rate (probably around 15%), or as a "license" like for a movie, where the royalty rate was more like 50%. Universal argued stringently, and continues to argue in a series of follow-up cases, that an iTunes purchase is just like a CD purchase, and the much lower rates apply. However, in the ReDigi case -- where the company is trying to argue that if an iTunes purchase is just like a sale, then clearly the "first sale doctrine" applies and those files can be resold -- EMI, which is in the process of being acquired by Universal, argues that an iTunes sale is a license, and thus there's no first sale.

Worona sums it up beautifully:

Putting these two arguments together, we see the music industry imagining transactions where what’s sold is a phonorecord but what’s purchased isn’t.

To me this seems like the Schrödinger's Cat of copyright law. According to the record labels, if we're talking about it from the seller's perspective, it's a sale. But the second you flip the equation and look at it from the buyer's perspective, it's a license. The cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Either the major labels are full of it... or they're breaking new ground in quantum physics. I'll assume it's the former, rather than the latter.

73 Comments | Leave a Comment..

SOPA Strikedown Aftermath: Old Media Cannot Tell The Narrative Of One Million People

from the extra-extra-read-all-about-it dept

As the political victory from the SOPA strikedown sinks in, reflections over old media's role take its place. We know that old media -- unidirectional media such as TV, newspapers, radio -- barely covered SOPA at all. We also know that this has political reasons, as their owners didn't want to draw attention to the issue. But even at the apex of the fightback, on January 18, old media barely mentioned what was happening. This is very noteworthy in itself.

I can't see this in any other light than old media being conceptually unable to tell the narrative of millions of people fighting against a powerful few dozen. It's not just that they chose not to -- it's that their very construction makes it as impossible for them to communicate those events as it would be for a color-blind person to communicate the impressions of a blue-period Picasso.

Old media, after all, is built on the premise of large organizations competing for resources; its narrative is dependent on pitting two powerful representatives against each other to portray their respective interests and let them battle it out in public. Old media consists of large corporations that can only portray conflicts between other large organizations.

This established old media style, which focuses on the pretense of impartiality, has sometimes been called "he-said, she-said journalism," pronounced with a small but well-deserved hint of disrespect.

The copyright monopoly industries had no problems producing a trained, charismatic debater who would probably win in any televised debate against a random person of one of the millions of activists. But in the end, it didn't matter: it was the millions that made the difference and won.

To put this in context, how did we see the SOPA debate play out, we who get our news on the net? We don't get our news from one source, but from hundreds, maybe thousands. You could easily model this as the cherry-picking of a typical newspaper -- I read a couple of political blogs, some comics, a couple of current affairs, eight real-time Twitter streams, and so on. The sum of it all could be made to resemble a newspaper on an ordinary day.

But there is a crucial difference in the net's cross-communication between information sources. When all of our hundreds of different news sources start to converge around and resonate with each other on one single topic, as happened with SOPA, then all of us sense that immediately. Immediately.

Old media is not capable of communicating that sense of powerful resonance. You would not see a message of political urgency instead of your usual comics on the comic page, for instance. But on the net, that happened for us with The Oatmeal and XKCD. Old media, in contrast, have their predetermined length of news clips and page lengths, divided by topics, portraying conflicts as experts talking it out. Half a page for talking about foreign affairs, half a page for tax policy, another page for sports, then the weather. Old media can't resonate with the people when something is important.

As it turns out, one expert talking on a small allocated space cannot represent one million concerned people -- a million who are leaderless to begin with, yet very organized and efficient anyway. Therefore, any attempt to frame this event in he-said, she-said journalism just falls flat on its face.

For us, there is no such thing as a maximum length of an article. (We use recycled electrons anyway.) When we want to talk more on a subject, there are no frames and boundaries stopping us from doing so. This article, to give one example, could be the typical length of an average blog post. But it's quite a bit longer than the hard limit of an op-ed piece.

There are two important things to learn from this: We don't need old media to tell our story to succeed, and we're able to tell the story ourselves. This, if anything, is what should have old media really worried.

For not only did old media fail in narrating the story, for political reasons and for capability reasons; they also failed in keeping their audience captive and preventing the story from being narrated anyway.

Narrated by us. All of us.

When a million people talk to their friends, family, and colleagues about a subject, that wins outright over any narrative that old media is trying to portray. That collective of a million people is able to coordinate discoveries and stories between them with an efficiency that makes them run in circles against any attempt to control the available information.

(This is how most Pirate Parties operate, by the way, and this is also the basis for swarm organization theory.)

As a project manager, one thing I've learned is that you can never be reliant on an element that is completely outside of your control for your project to succeed; if so, your plan is broken. Old media, up until now, was such an element. No longer. While they can certainly assist, they are no longer necessary for saving the net and our values.

In summary, we learned that this was the first sign of old media becoming… irrelevant, is probably the right word. Irrelevant for things that really matter.

Rick Falkvinge is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party. Follow him as @Falkvinge on Twitter, read his private blog, or get him for a keynote.

67 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Always A Gatekeeper: RIAA Backs .music Proposal... If It's Only Limited To 'Accredited' Musicians

from the gates-have-come-down dept

For years there have been a few efforts underway to try to create a .music top level domain. While I'm not totally convinced such a TLD really is needed, it's been interesting to watch the RIAA's allergic reaction to the general idea. About a year ago, we wrote about how the RIAA was complaining that any such TLD might (gasp!) be used to infringe, and arguing that ICANN shouldn't allow it unless it was completely locked down. Apparently, the RIAA has now found the plan it likes, siding with a company called Far Further on its bid to run .music, and going against the company that has fought the hardest for .music... a company called dotMusic. If you want to understand why the RIAA is now endorsing Far Further's proposal, it's pretty simple:

Its .music would be restricted, along the same lines as gTLDs such a .pro, to card-carrying members of what the company calls "accredited Global Music Community Members".

"It's not open to everyone," Styll said. "You'd have to join an organization."

Amateur bands would have to be members of an accredited songwriters association to get a .music address, for example.

In other words, it goes against the reality we know today, which is that new technologies are allowing anyone to become a musician. Instead, it's based on the obsolete notion that only those in a special club are "really" musicians. What you end up with is exactly what the RIAA wants: a system where it gets to "accredit" musicians. In other words, a system where gatekeepers still matter. Of course, what they don't realize is that if .music uses such a system, it almost immediately becomes irrelevant, and sets itself up as an exclusionary club in an era when such things aren't necessary any more.

127 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Park Ranger Tases Guy Walking Dogs Without A Leash

from the watch-your-back dept

In the latest example of questionable taser use, a man walking his two dogs off-leash at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area was tased in the back by a park ranger, who was apparently trying to make an example of him. The problem was that the guy, Gary Hesterberg, was walking the dogs at Rancho Corral de Tierra, which used to be an off-leash walking area until it was just recently incorporated into the National Park. When the park ranger confronted Hesterberg and asked for his identification, for reasons unknown, Hesterberg gave her a fake name, and then tried repeatedly to leave. Finally, when he started to walk away, the ranger shot him in the back... because she was trying to "educate residents of the rule." Then, he was arrested "on suspicion of failing to obey a lawful order, having dogs off-leash and knowingly providing false information."

It seems that the use of a taser in this situation was excessive and unwarranted. The guy wasn't threatening the ranger in any way, and even if he had lied about his name (not that lying should be a reason to tase someone), the ranger wouldn't have known that at the time, since Hesterberg only gave his real name to the authorities after he got tased. Did the ranger accomplish her goal of "educating" visitors of the park rules? Yes, if educating means "scaring into submission." As Eric Cartman would say, "Respect my authoritah!"

132 Comments | Leave a Comment..

If The RIAA Wants To Talk About Misinformation Campaigns, Let's Start With The RIAA's Misinformation Campaign

from the misinformation-works dept

We already walked through the ridiculousness of RIAA boss Cary Sherman claiming that the reason SOPA/PIPA were defeated was because of a "misinformation" campaign on the part of some tech companies. Tons of folks who have followed the RIAA for years probably broke out in open laughter when we saw this statement from Sherman:

Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works.

Because, if anyone knows that "misinformation works," it's Cary Sherman, who is famous for his ability to run vast misinformation campaigns to get bills passed. Thankfully, Ernest Falcon, over at Public Knowledge decided that if Sherman wanted to open the door to discussing "misinformation campaigns" concerning SOPA/PIPA, we might as well focus on the biggest one of all: the claims by the MPAA and RIAA that DNS blocking was no big deal:

During the legislative hearing on SOPA, House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman on Cybersecurity Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) questioned MPAA Exec. Vice President Michael O’Leary about the cybersecurity problem.  In response he received the standard misinformation campaign line of there was no cybersecurity problem and that this type of activity “occurred all the time.”  To bolster their misinformation campaign, the content lobby worked hard to manufacture the “truth” by highlighting the work of the very small number of individuals (a grand total of three) who wrote “technical rebuttals.”  These were not so much rebuttals as they were well orchestrated advocacy pieces that ignored the engineering and distorted the studies they utilized in order to dupe Members of Congress to believe the legitimate concerns were in fact unsupported.

Part of the RIAA and MPAA misinformation campaign centered on the argument that DNS filtering and secure networks (DNSSEC) could both exist in the same network.  This was despite the fact that top experts in the field provided an extensive explanation why that would not be technologically possible (a couple of these individuals actually saved the Internet in the past).  In the end, when Comcast (a SOPA supporter) announced they had to shut down anything that filters DNS traffic when they activated DNSSEC and the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator stated that the bills “pose a real risk to cybersecurity,” the jig was up.

Lastly, claiming that censorship concerns in regards to DNS filtering were misplaced completely ignores the fact that SOPA and PIPA moved America closer to censorship oriented regimes.  If these bills were enacted into law, American broadband providers would have been required to install the same filtering technology used in China, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.  This reality triggered the outpouring of opposition from the international human rights community who fight censorship overseas every day and point to the United States as the model.  Summing up the well informed reasoning behind their opposition, Julian Sanchez with the Cato Institute points out that enacting SOPA and PIPA would mean the “only difference between the Unites States and China is what's on the blacklist.” 

Part of the RIAA's favorite tactics is to pull out all the dirty tricks in the book... and any time people call them on it, to accuse the other side of using the dirty tricks that were really being used by the RIAA. It's a classic DC-insider move, but in this day and age, where the internet can route around lies, it's going to backfire, as it did here. All you have to do is look at the comments on the original Sherman NY Times piece, where upwards of 90% of the comments call Sherman out for his ridiculous claims. Sherman has the old playbook, the one where those who knew the truth couldn't speak back. If he had paid attention at all to what happened in the SOPA/PIPA debate he would have know that playbook doesn't work any more. But, it's all he knows. If the major labels were smart (don't laugh), they'd dump Sherman and put someone in place who actually gets the internet.

109 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Big News: Germany Says It Won't Sign ACTA [Update: ... Yet]

from the wowsers dept

Okay, things just got serious over ACTA. In our post on Latvia bailing on signing ACTA, we noted that in joining with Poland and the Czech Republic, these were still much smaller European states, and unlikely to have too much of an impact. But... now comes the really surprising news that Germany has decided that it won't sign. Germany, of course, is the largest EU economy. Details are sparse, but even though the country had earlier agreed that it would sign it, the Foreign Office has apparently revoked that decision and will not sign the agreement... We'll update more later as more details come in. However, this is big news and could really stop ACTA. Update: Another source on this suggests that Germany is saying that it is putting its plan to sign on hold, but may sign later. It had intended to sign soon, but is now going to wait until the EU Parliament decides how it wants to go. So they haven't dropped ACTA entirely, but this definitely shows that the protests are worrying politicians.

33 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Newspaper Boss Says Newspapers Need More Money... Because New Media Steals & May 'Destroy Civil Society'

from the luddite-much? dept

Via Mathew Ingram, we learn of Alan Crosbie, the chair of Thomas Crosbie Holdings, a large Irish media conglomerate, which apparently believes all of this online claptrap could be on its way to destroying civil society -- which is apparently why we need to fund more newspapers. Or something. Honestly, the guy barely seems to be making any sense at all. He says that old media property likes newspapers, radio and television are important and should get funded because they "produce good information." But that new media "sometimes give credibility to news that maybe should not have credibility."

It would appear that Crosbie is, well, confusing the medium for the message. There are plenty of newspapers, radio and television news efforts that equally (if not more so) give credibility to news that should not have credibility. That, alone, has nothing to do with the medium in question. And yet, to Crosbie, new media could be the end of civil society:

There is a tsunami of information coming from new media, some of which has the "capacity to destroy civil society and cause unimaginable suffering."

Again, what does this have to do with new media vs. old media? The details come out later. Apparently, he just thinks that new media "steals" from old media, and thus old media can't afford to produce their good news any more:

"The fact is that, to generate good information carries a cost. It requires money. Unless you steal it like most new media companies do.

"And, if you bring that argument to its logical conclusion all you'll get on their news sites is a blank screen, because they eventually will have no one left to steal from."

We've been hearing these arguments for years, and yet, somehow, it seems like more news than ever before is being produced. And rather than "stealing" from old media, plenty of new media sources are adding value to those sources (value that the old media folks could provide if they just stopped blaming new media). Either way, comments like these are the sort of comments that should make any board of directors immediately question what out of touch luddite they have in charge of their media properties...

47 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Do The Differences Between Software Piracy And Media Piracy Matter?

from the important-distinctions dept

Danah Boyd (or danah boyd as she prefers to be called) is widely recognized as an authority on privacy, identity and social networks. A couple of weeks ago, in the context of the fight against SOPA, she wrote a blog post where she made an interesting distinction between different kinds of piracy:

There are many different aspects of piracy, but for simplicity sake, I want to focus on two aspects that feed into bills like SOPA and PROTECT IP: piracy as a competitive issue vs. piracy as a cultural issue. This can often be split as software piracy vs. media piracy, but not always.

She then gives a concrete example:

Imagine that you are an appliance manufacturer in the United States. You make things like toasters. You are required to abide by American laws. You must pay your employees at least a minimum wage; you must follow American safety regulations. All of this raises the overhead of your production process. In addition, you must also do things like purchase your software legally. Your designers use some CAD software, which they pay for. Your accountants use accounting software, which they pay for. Sure, you’ve cut some costs by using “free” software but, by and large, you pay a decent amount of money to software companies to use the systems that they built.

You really want to get your toasters into Wal-Mart, but time and time again, you find yourself undercut by competitors in foreign countries where the safety laws are more lax, the minimum wage laws are nonexistent, and where companies aren’t punished for stealing software. Are you grouchy? Of course you are. Needless to say, you see this as an unfair competition issue. There aren’t legal ways of bending the market to create fair competition. You can’t innovate your way out of this dilemma and so you want Congress to step in and make sure that you can compete fairly.

Well, AutoCAD, the leading CAD software, costs a few thousand dollars; the price of accounting programs for businesses varies greatly, depending on the size of the company. But the overall cost of specialized software for the toaster company needn't be more than a few tens of thousands of dollars (using open source operating systems and office suites helps minimize generic software costs.) Since you're hoping to get your toasters into Wal-Mart, out of necessity you have high-volume production runs (if you don't, then you're a boutique toaster company, and you can charge premium prices.) That means the extra cost due to software licensing per toaster will be a few cents.

Moreover, as that first paragraph quoted above makes clear, the key factor of the "unfair" competition is the radically different cost of manufacturing in countries where wages are lower, and health and environmental standards are less rigorous and hence less costly to implement. These will make far more difference to the costs than the possible use of pirated software, especially at Wal-Mart scales.

As a result, the logic behind the opening claim of this paragraph in the post seems dubious:

Combating software piracy in the supply chain is a reasonable request and part of what makes bills like PROTECT IP messy is that there’s a kernel of this issue in these bills. Bills like this are also meant to go after counterfeit products. Most folks really want to know what’s in baby formula or what’s in the medicines they purchase. Unfortunately, though, these aspects of piracy quickly gets muddled with cultural facets of piracy, particularly once the media industries have gotten involved.

The second part is absolutely spot-on, though: people rightly want to know that the medicines and foodstuffs they buy are safe. That means there is a genuine case for legislation that helps protect consumers against such health and safety dangers. But that's about combating counterfeits, not fighting digital piracy, much less software piracy. And that's the crucial distinction: not between software piracy and media piracy, but between digital piracy and analog counterfeits.

It's important not to blur that difference, as the last sentence of the above paragraph seems to do. After all, that's precisely the trick the ACTA negotiators used to bring in disproportionate punishments for digital piracy -- by confounding it with counterfeiting that endangered the public's health.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

76 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Congress Actually Helping The Internet, Rather Than Mucking It Up?

from the could-it-be? dept

We're so used to Congress trying to muck up the internet, that it's rare we hear about cases where they're actually looking to make things better. While the idea has been floating around for a little while, (and the actual bill was introduced back in December when we were focused on the whole SOPA/PIPA debate), the Startup Act is starting to get some attention, with co-sponsors Senators Jerry Moran and Mark Warner taking to the WSJ to explain why the Startup Act is important. The basic idea behind the bill is to remove some of the regulatory hassles of starting and building a new company. As we've pointed out repeatedly, studies have shown that pretty much all of the net job growth in the US comes from startups, and a bill like the Startup Act should help make it easier for startups to get going. To be honest, the bill could be even stronger in a bunch of places, but as a starting point, it's definitely nice to see. The focus is on making it easier for startups to be startups by doing the following:

• It will make permanent a capital gains tax exemption on the sale of certain kinds of small business stock that is held for at least five years. In other words, it will encourage long-term investment in startups, which is just the kind of investing we should be encouraging (rather than quick flip type investing, which is more about gambling on changes, rather than investing in economic growth).
• It decreases corporate taxes on new businesses during their first three years of profitability -- again making it easier for young companies to grow and to reinvest their own profits in jobs and growth.
• While it doesn't do away with crippling government regulations for small businesses, it does require a cost-benefit analysis of the economic impact of many of those regulations on startups.
• It implements a simplified form of the startup/founders visa -- which is about helping non-Americans start companies and create jobs in the US. We've talked about the startup visa in the past and why it's a good idea. No matter how you feel about other immigration issues, this one is pretty clearly about having immigrants create jobs in the US (rather than elsewhere).

There are a few other things in the bill, but overall the key point is to basically get overbearing regulations out of the way. These are regulations that bog down many startups (or prevent them from getting started at all), and really put a drain on the key part of the economy that is contributing to both job growth and economic growth. It's rare to see Congress trying to do something that helps the internet, rather than mucks it up, so we should certainly highlight when such efforts are being pushed forward. I have a few quibbles around the edges on pieces of the bill, and really think it should go further in other areas, but on the whole it's a really good start.

27 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Latvia Joins Countries Putting The Brakes On ACTA Approval

from the join-the-party dept

Following the news that Poland and the Czech Republic have put the brakes on ACTA ratification, we can now add Latvia to the bunch:

The Economy Minister Daniels Pavluts has decided to block the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has caused wide protests in the society.

On Wednesday, February 8, the Minister announced that he made the decision taking into account the mood of various groups of the society, as well as worries of several experts about the possibility of ACTA implementation in Latvia.

He thinks that it is already too late for a proactive and timely explanation of what ACTA really means. So now there is no rush with its ratification in the Parliament. “First we need a constructive and reasoned dialogue and a discussion with all the interested parties,” he says.

Of course, Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia are "smaller" players in the EU, and there are disputes over whether or not having some countries decide not to ratify kills the whole process. Basically, there are different interpretations of how things work under the Lisbon Treaty, with some saying that even if some countries don't ratify, the EU could still ratify and issue a directive forcing the various member states to "harmonize." So it's good to see these countries putting the brakes on what was going to be a pure "check the boxes" approval process -- but ACTA is still very likely to move forward overall.

18 Comments | Leave a Comment..