Why Mandate A La Carte Cable When It's Happening Online Already?

Politics

from the just-let-it-go dept

We’ve been among those who think that the government shouldn’t be forcing cable providers to offer a la carte channels. While people always insist that if they got a la carte cable, it would be cheaper, the facts are quite different. The economics of providing a la carte through existing systems would greatly increase overhead, and make it difficult to make things work. Most people would end up paying the same or more — but for fewer channels. Those who are complaining might be better off recognizing that when they pay for cable they’re effectively just paying for what they want — and the other channels are freebies.

Or, they can just realize that a la carte TV is coming without the need for government interference. Adam Thierer notes that there’s a growing movement of folks realizing that you can get an awful lot of television programming (legally) online these days. It’s reaching the point where we’re finally moving towards a world that we predicted years ago that shows are independent of channels or TV providers, and you can just get them directly online. That’s already leading some people to ditch TV service entirely, knowing they can get plenty of shows they want online — and all of this is happening without the government getting involved at all. So, can anyone explain why it still makes sense for the government to get involved here?

Filed Under: a la carte, cable, internet, regulations

Cooking Mama Shows How To Respond To Critical Parody

Say That Again

from the thanks-for-the-promotion! dept

We’ve seen plenty of organizations react poorly and sue when someone creates a parody of what they do. Parody is protected under fair use rules, but that doesn’t always stop lawsuits. And, some were apparently wondering if Cooking Mama, a popular video game for Nintendo platforms would get offended and sue over a critical video from PETA. Cooking Mama is apparently a game where you simulate preparing a meal. The PETA version used artwork from the original game and created Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals, with the rather overt position. Some had thought that the company behind the game, Majesco, might sue. But, Jeff Leyser points out, the company took the high road, responding to the parody game and essentially said “thanks for the free publicity,” while noting that the game has options for vegetarian meals.

“Food lover and culinary cutie Cooking Mama is a virtual chef who believes that good home cooked food, properly prepared from the best ingredients, can bring people together around the table and make the world a happier place. That’s why Mama is taking a stand with oven mitts raised high against the latest PETA objection targeting her freshly released videogame, Cooking Mama World Kitchen, that shipped this week for Wii from Majesco Entertainment Company. Mama wants people to know that World Kitchen includes 51 recipes from around the world, ranging from vegetarian fare like miso soup and rice cakes to international delicacies like ginger pork and octopus dumplings.”

See? It’s not that difficult to respond without resorting to a lawsuit.

Filed Under: cooking mama, parody, response
Companies: majesco, peta

McCain Responds To Jackson Browne Lawsuit: Here's How Fair Use Works…

Legal Issues

from the indeed dept

During the presidential campaign, we noted that singer Jackson Browne had sued the McCain campaign for the use of one of his songs in a commercial. The McCain campaign has filed a response to the lawsuit, first noting that it wasn’t the McCain campaign that used the song in an ad, but the Republican Party of Ohio. Second, the campaign points out that the use of the song probably qualifies as fair use:

“Given the political, non-commercial, public interest and transformative nature of the use of a long-ago published song, the miniscule amount used and the lack of any effect on the market for the song (other than perhaps to increase sales of the song), these claims are barred by the fair use doctrine.”

Of course, between this and the McCain campaign’s attempt to get YouTube to apply different fair use rules to presidential campaign videos, it makes you wonder if Senator McCain will actually try to do something in the Senate to improve copyright law to make fair use more explicit and make it clear that it covers these sorts of actions. Somehow I doubt it.

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, jackson browne, john mccain

Zune Music Rental Service, Now With Stuff You Get To Keep, Too

Overhype

from the getting-desperate? dept

Online-music rental services — where users get access to a library of songs for as long as they pay a monthly fee — keep hanging around, despite little apparent interest in them. In an attempt to breathe some life into its subscription service, called Zune Pass, Microsoft is now giving subscribers 10 songs they can permanently keep per month. The company says its research shows that more consumers might consider subscription services at current pricing levels if they got “to take something with them.” But isn’t that just saying consumers prefer to buy music, rather than rent it? Rentals work for one-time-use items like movies and books, but for things like songs, which people tend to listen to multiple times, subscriptions aren’t attractive. The argument that subscriptions are good for discovery doesn’t really hold water, either, given the proliferation of online services that let users listen to huge libraries of music for free. One other angle to this news: why would anybody purchase digital content from Microsoft after the PlaysForSure fiasco, in which it shut off its DRM servers, making it impossible to transfer PlaysForSure-“protected” content to any new devices, rendering it largely useless?

Filed Under: music, ownership, rental, zune
Companies: microsoft

Did The EU Actually Do Something Right In Its Efforts To Fight Google Dominance?

Culture

from the sorta dept

Over the past few years, we’ve seen various European governments freak out over Google’s dominance over the internet, complaining that since it was an American company, it was a problem and “something must be done.” Usually this took the form of handing over a ton of taxpayer money to some ill-defined project that would compete with Google, but which usually just turned into a way for private companies to get free money. However, one project to come out of these efforts actually does look interesting. The EU has launched Europeana, a site that attempts to offer up, digitally, various cultural artifacts of Europe — and do so in creative and useful ways. Rather than just showing documents, for example, it ties together various multimedia to make things a lot more useful.

Considering that much of the cultural content being digitized for this project is already in the hands of the government, they’re pretty much the only ones that can do this, and it does seem like a great way to expose more people to these cultural artifacts. So, consider us at least a bit surprised that something useful came out of all of this. Of course, this is hardly the “Google-killer” that’s always discussed when talking about these projects. Even the article linked here seems to act as if this is a major triumph over Google, though it’s not clear why. This isn’t a competition, and putting this info online isn’t somehow defeating Google. It’s just another source of information, and that’s a good thing. Of course, even in doing something “right” it looks like the EU screwed up a bit — as they didn’t plan for the amount of traffic the prototype site received, and it quickly went down.

Filed Under: culture, eu, europe, eurpeana, online

Coupons.com Drops DMCA Case Against Guy Who Told People To Delete Files On Their Hard Drive

Legal Issues

from the legal-issues-left-unsettled dept

We’ve been covering the DMCA lawsuit filed by Coupons.com against a guy, John Stottlemire, who figured out that if you delete a few files on your hard drive you could make extra copies of the coupon. Coupons.com tried to greatly stretch the DMCA to claim that this was circumventing copy protection — but simply telling people to delete files on a hard drive hardly seems to be an circumvention tool. Plus, there were some legal issues over whether or not what Coupons.com was doing was really “copy protection.” In many cases, Coupons.com’s arguments seemed to contradict itself, though Stottlemire (who defended himself) was quick to point that out to the court.

It looks like Coupons.com recognized that this lawsuit was going to end badly, and has now agreed to dismiss the case. This is a big win for Stottlemire, though it’s unfortunate that there was no legal ruling on this attempt to stretch the meaning of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause. It will, undoubtedly, come up again in the future in other lawsuits.

Filed Under: copy protection, coupons, dmca, john stottlemire
Companies: coupons.com

RIAA Sued For Racketeering Yet Again

Legal Issues

from the we'll-see-how-this-works dept

A few people have filed lawsuits against the RIAA for racketeering in the past, though these charges have always been dismissed. In one such case, where the filed charges were dismissed over the summer, new claims were filed again charging the RIAA with racketeering for extortion, mail fraud and wire fraud in its ongoing efforts involving weakly supported threats against alleged file sharers demanding money to avoid being sued. The file-sharing defendants are trying to turn this into a class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone falsely accused by the RIAA. Given the (lack of) success of all previous racketeering lawsuits on this topic, I wouldn’t get too optimistic of this one going anywhere just yet.

Filed Under: extortion, mail fraud, racketeering, riaa, wire fraud
Companies: riaa

Dear 50 Cent: Did I Just Violate Your Trademark?

Legal Issues

from the morons-in-a-hurry-eating-a-chalupa dept

A bunch of readers submitted the story about the ongoing lawsuit between the rapper 50 Cent and Taco Bell. Taco Bell started running an ad campaign, where they jokingly sent a public letter to 50 Cent asking him to change his name to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent to help publicize a Taco Bell promotional menu. 50 Cent then sued, claiming a trademark violation. This case fascinates me for a few reasons, as it raises some interesting issues. First, you can sort of see where 50 Cent is coming from — as Taco Bell is using his brand in commerce without his permission — but I’d argue that it’s pretty clear that 50 Cent isn’t involved and hasn’t endorsed the product (and, yes, even a “moron in a hurry” would hopefully recognize that). Since it’s just an “open letter” to the rapper, rather than anything involving him, it should be clear that he’s not necessarily involved. If any commercial website (say, a blog) wrote an “open letter” to a celebrity, would that be a violation of publicity rights or trademark? Unlikely. So why would it be so in this case? Even more interesting, of course, is that the lawsuit only served to draw a lot more attention to this whole thing, meaning that Taco Bell is probably pretty pleased about it. Of course, if I were Taco Bell, I might think about adding a single item to the menu that actually costs 50 cents… After all, you can’t protect a price.

Filed Under: 50 cent, trademark, use in commerce
Companies: taco bell

Companies Sued For Not Paying For Time Spent Booting Up A Computer

Legal Issues

from the labor-law-fun dept

Gizmodo points us to the fascinating news that there is a growing number of lawsuits from hourly employees suing employers for not paying them for the time they sit waiting for their computers to boot up in the morning. The article also mentions time waiting for a computer to shut down, but I’m not sure how that should matter. Once you start that process, can’t you just leave? I can certainly sympathize that the bootup process can take quite some time — especially on older Windows machines, but this hardly seems like lawsuit material. As some have pointed out, for many of these employees, they’re unlikely to be doing work while the machine is booting up in the first place. The lawyers filing these lawsuits claim that many workers do get started before the computer boots up, but if the employees really are upset about this issue, why not just decide to not start working until the computer has booted up. Problem solved.

Filed Under: booting up, hourly workers, lawsuits

Three Strikes Rule May Sneak Into EU Law, Despite Earlier Rejection

Politics

from the never-let-your-guard-down dept

We’ve talked in the past about how the entertainment industry never gives up trying to push through its legislative agenda — even after it is dealt setbacks. You may recall that the EU Parliament rejected a proposal to institute a “three strikes” law favored by the entertainment industry, that would kick people off the internet if they’re accused (not found guilty, just accused) of unauthorized file sharing three times. The EU Parliament correctly noted that such a law would interfere with individuals privacy and civil rights. However, some academics have noted that another set of laws focusing on telco reform may backdoor in nearly identical three strikes language, requiring telcos to adopt such policies. The fear, obviously, is that this issue, buried in a big telco bill may not get very much attention and may be put into law without much debate, despite the EU Parliament’s earlier rejection of such an idea.

Filed Under: eu, europe, telco regulations, three strikes