Lily Allen, Don't Apologize To Me, Apologize To Everyone Else

from the sorry,-but-that's-not-the-point dept

It seems that a few folks misunderstood the point of my post yesterday in joking about Lily Allen's double standard in ranting against unfair copying while copying blog posts from other sites. And Lily herself appears to be among those people. She's posted an apology, though, a bit petulantly, starting in all capital letters:

I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS THAT I WASNT TRYING TO PASS OF THOSE WORDS AS MY OWN , HERE IS A LINK TO THE WEBSIITE I ACQUIRED THE PIECE FROM . Apologies to Michael Masnick

While I appreciate the "apology," that's really missing the point. First, the reason TorrentFreak and I both brought it up wasn't because I was upset about her using the post. As I clearly said in my response, I thought it was great that she wanted to use our post, and I encouraged her to do so. The point, though, was that it was a bit hypocritical of her to be going on and on about how evil it is to copy another's work without their permission, when she went and did the same thing. Furthermore, the point is that when it's natural and easy for people to copy like that, it's time to learn to accept it and use it to your advantage. So, no apology is necessary to me. My post wasn't about you trying to pass off my words as your own, but recognizing that even you, Lily Allen copy other people's work all the time, even without realizing it.

And, yet, in the very same breath, you want to kick people off the internet for doing the same thing?

If anyone deserves an apology, it's all the people you've been blasting with this complaint that it's "piracy" that's somehow harming artists, when the actual evidence shows no such thing. Plenty of artists have learned to embrace file sharing and used it to their advantage, suggesting it's not piracy that's the problem -- it's artists unwillingness to adapt and put in place smarter business models. Running to the gov't and asking them to kick your fans off the internet isn't a new business model. So, don't apologize to me. We're happy for you to use Techdirt posts however you want. We just thought it was worth calling your attention to the fact that even you seem to have no problem copying stuff when convenient, so maybe you should think twice about blasting everyone else for doing the same thing.

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Metallica Says It's Sorry About Review Takedowns; Blames Management

from the always-management's-fault dept

Mathew Ingram alerts us to the news that the band Metallica has responded on its own website to the controversy over representatives from the band demanding reviews of the band's latest album get taken offline. The band's response is basically to blame its management company:

We were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites. Our response was "WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record. . . that makes no sense to us!" So after a few rounds of managerial ear spank and sentencing everyone at Q Prime to 20 push-ups each, we figured why not take matters into our own hands and just post the links here on our site.

And, with that, they linked to the reviews. While plausible, the whole thing sounds sketchy at this point. It seems like a weak cop-out to say "oh, it was our managers' fault" when the band has had so much controversy concerning how it has interacted with the internet community. Besides, even this response rings hollow. The band only seemed concerned that the management team took down "mostly positive reviews," not the fact that it took down reviews. It's nice that they have now linked to the reviews, but the fact that this happened in the first place still seems like a problem.

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Better Response To Crimes On YouTube: Force The Criminals To Apologize On YouTube

from the much-better-response dept

We keep seeing stories of proposed legislation to make it a crime to post video evidence of yourself committing a crime. This seems totally backwards. If the person is posting evidence of themselves committing a crime, that makes it that much easier for the police to capture them. Giving them reasons not to post evidence of their own crime seems backwards -- and even some of those advocating these laws seem to implicitly recognize this fact.

It appears one judge has a much more reasonable response in a case involving some kids who committed a dumb act and put the video evidence on YouTube: part of their punishment is to also post a video apology on YouTube. If the idea behind putting the video up on YouTube was to get some "fame" for filming themselves doing something stupid, shaming them on YouTube seems a lot more sensible than adding additional criminal charges.

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Judge Apologizes, Pays $100k To Tom Siebel For Malicious Lawsuit

from the you-don't-see-that-every-day dept

Now here's something you don't often see. As part of a settlement, a California judge has publicly apologized and paid Tom Siebel $100,000 to settle a twelve-year battle over charges of sexual discrimination filed against Siebel by this judge back when she was an attorney. Siebel, who founded the software company which bore his name until it was sold to Oracle, was sued in 1996 for wrongful termination and sexual discrimination in the firing of a sales exec who was represented by this judge (before she was a judge). However, there was little evidence to support the claims, and all were thrown out (other than a claim that Siebel had failed to pay some past due bonuses). After the case ended, Siebel then sued the attorneys for malicious prosecution -- and this agreement is the settlement. Siebel, who doesn't need the money, says he'll donate it to Stanford to be used in a program on legal ethics.

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