Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 2 Jul 2012 23:14:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120622/15423319441/band-asks-fans-to-donate-sounds-next-album.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120622/15423319441/band-asks-fans-to-donate-sounds-next-album.shtml Uniform Motion a few times. It's an excellent band that has done some very interesting things to connect with fans, including being incredibly transparent and focusing on the importance of the relationship over the value of the MP3 file. And like all smart content creators, they're continuing to innovate and try new things. For example, they recently announced a plan to have fans "donate a sound". Fans can go to the band's Soundcloud page, where they can upload sounds which Uniform Motion will incorporate into their next album. This is cool on a variety of levels.

First, it's just a neat way to connect with fans in general, and actually make them feel truly engaged with the upcoming album. Second, it's a neat way of showing how some new technologies are making things that used to be difficult quite easy today. Soundcloud is a relatively new service, but the simple ability for an artist to quickly and easily get sounds from their fans, used creatively, allows Uniform Motion to offer something really cool. I'm excited to see what they end up coming out with in the end.

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]]> connect-with-fans... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120622/15423319441 Mon, 21 Mar 2011 22:11:37 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01520813455/how-copyright-filters-present-serious-challenge-to-dj-culture.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01520813455/how-copyright-filters-present-serious-challenge-to-dj-culture.shtml implemented a copyright filter, which resulted in a bunch of DJs (who are some of the biggest users of SoundCloud) to have their work go missing. It's not hard to figure out why SoundCloud put in place a filter. The entertainment industry has decided to pretend that copyright law in the US requires such a filter, to avoid falling afoul of the DMCA's "red flag" clause. Yet, as many people have pointed out, if the DMCA was designed to require filters, it would have said so. Of course, because of this, many companies who host works have felt compelled to use filters, not just to avoid a lawsuit, but to keep the entertainment industry happy, because most of these companies want to work with the entertainment industry (contrary to the claims of some that these services just want to "ripoff" the entertainment industry).

However, there are all sorts of problems with these filters. Contrary to the claims of some, determining copyright infringement is not an easy call for humans, let alone computers. Computers, for example, have no algorithm to determine fair use. The end result is that the system defaults to blocking way too frequently, taking down works that are legitimate. David Collado points us to yet another example of this happening with SoundCloud. Apparently a DJ from Brussels, DJ Lowdjo, recently was listening to a lot of Turkish psychedelic rock, and noticed that American artists The Gaslamp Killer & Gonjasufi apparently copied a bunch of these same tracks, with very minor edits, on the album they released last year. Lowdjo tried to upload his own work, based on the same Turkish psychedelic rock songs... and it got blocked by SoundCloud's copyright filter, claiming that the copyright on the song belonged to the Gaslamp Killer's rightsholder, Milan Records.

Of course, Lowdjo's work was similarly inspired from the same source, so the copyright claim seems questionable. But a computer apparently can't make that distinction. Unfortunately, it appears SoundCloud also refused to respond to Lowdjo's counternotice. Some argue that the DMCA requires companies to put works back online following a counternotice, while others point out that sites are free to refuse to put the works back up at their own discretion. At the very least, SoundCloud should have responded, though.

Either way, the situation is unfortunate for both SoundCloud and DJ culture. The supporters of filters will simply brush off DJ culture as if it doesn't matter, or if it's "just copying," rather than any real art form, which is pretty insulting (as an aside, why is it that the folks who insist that copyright is needed to "defend culture" are always the first to mock any sort of culture they don't like?). The reality is that DJ culture is an art form, whether people like it or not, and copyright law (and the way the entertainment industry interprets the law) is clearly getting in the way of that culture. SoundCloud, and other services pushed to install filters, are sort of caught in the middle of all of this, trying to stay on the right side of the law and appease the entertainment industry, while also helping DJ culture. At some point, something has to give.

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]]> collateral-damage http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110311/01520813455 Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:32:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101227/09520712421/permission-culture-automated-diminishment-fair-use.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101227/09520712421/permission-culture-automated-diminishment-fair-use.shtml point of fair use is that it's supposed to allow for creativity without permission. Even in a society dominated by copyright, at least our courts and regulators recognized the need for creativity built (in part) on what came before, without having to go through the tollbooths of requiring permission to create. However, some recent events have shown how the DMCA and other attempts to beef up copyright law are trying to erode the very notion of fair use without permission.

SinkDeep alerts us to the news that a bunch of DJs are upset after discovering that SoundCloud took down a bunch of the mixes they had hosted on the service. If you're not familiar with SoundCloud, in the last few years, it has become one of the most popular tools for musicians and DJs to host their music. It offers a really nice toolset for anyone looking to promote their music online (and for others to build apps on top of it). SoundCloud has also been a pretty big supporter of open culture, supporting things like Creative Commons along the way.

I contacted SoundCloud to find out what was going on, and the response was pretty much as I expected. Due to the nature of the copyright world we live in today, the company recently implemented a fingerprinting-type technology, similar to those used by YouTube (ContentID) and MySpace (Audible Magic), which lets copyright holders designate their own works, and which SoundCloud then automatically blocks. While the original link above "blames" SoundCloud for becoming a "walled garden," that's not really fair nor accurate. The real problem is the nature of our copyright laws today, that assume infringement over fair use. As we've discussed before, copyright law is effectively broken when it sets up fair use as a defense, rather than a proactive right. Fair use should be seen as the default until proven otherwise, if fair use is really (as is claimed) designed to be a pressure valve on copyright law to allow free speech.

Unfortunately, the industry has pushed back on this notion to a huge level. The very crux of the YouTube-Viacom legal fight is really over this issue. As many have noted, in the specifics of the lawsuit, Viacom basically notes that it has no problem with YouTube starting with the exact date that it implemented its ContentID program. In Viacom's (and much of the entertainment industry's) interpretation, the DMCA requires such filters. The likely reason that smaller companies like SoundCloud are now implementing filters as well is that they know there's a half decent chance that the eventual outcome of lawsuits like the Viacom/YouTube fight will mean that a company is required by law to have such things in place.

But, of course, the problem with all of this is that it goes back to creating permission culture, rather than a culture where people freely create. You won't be able to use these popular or useful tools to build on the works of others -- which, contrary to the claims of today's copyright defenders, is a key component in almost all creativity you see out there -- without first getting permission. The systems will try to block it, until you make your case that something is fair use -- though many will just not bother. This is unfortunate, and really shuts down a major opening for creativity these days. If you look at the history of music, nearly all popular music today is built on earlier works, without first getting permission. It would be a terrible situation if we end up shutting off that form of creativity by requiring permission for everyone first.

The issue isn't to blame the tools providers for implementing such features, but to look more deeply at the state of copyright law today, where we're increasingly suffocating the real purpose of fair use, which was to allow such creativity, without first requiring permission. These filters don't understand fair use, so they assume anything that matches is infringement, and because of that, we all suffer.

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