The time has gone by for urging the old and stale idea that authors should be satisfied with fame, and not permitted to entertain any sordid motives. The desire to acquire property is no sordid stimulus. Property is the basis of civilization. The acquisition of property raises the lower classes. The diffusion of property humbles the upper. Those laws which most sacredly guarantee and most rigidly enforce the right which a man has to the fruits of his labour, are not merely incentives to industry—they are the surest bulwarks of freedom.
—”Veto”, Correspondence, The Plaindealer, vol. 1, pg. 122 (Dec. 3, 1836).
Behind the music: This column might be ending, but the fight continues — Thank you, Helienne Lindvall, for four years of fearless reporting on the ever-changing music industry landscape. Lindvall is ending her column at the Guardian, but, as she notes, “the fight continues.” Chris Castle offers a great sendoff for Helienne Lindvall’s Excellent Column.
The Naked and the TED — Evgeny Morozov writes one of the most scathing, comprehensive critiques of the type of thinking that springs forth from Silicon Valley and permeates the internet. ”But perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as redemption, slogans masquerading as truths.”
A2IM Files Comments To Obama Administration Regarding New Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement — The American Association of Independent Music has posted its comments on intellectual property enforcement, requested by Victoria Espinel, the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. A2IM lays out what it feels should be the top 3 priorities in intellectual property enforcement.
About.com and the Slow Decline of Content Farms — Jonathan Bailey reports, “It’s an amazing thought to realize that Google is powerful enough to sustain entire economies, in particular with companies and individuals not directly involved with it, but that’s exactly what the content farm economy is: An economy of Google. Basically, content farms work by putting out as much content as possible on high-searched-for terms in hopes that Google will drive large amounts of traffic to them. Spammers do this by either scraping or generating content to fool the search engines but content farms do it by paying an army of authors to do it by hand.”
Understanding Flava Works v myVidster: does inline linking infringe copyright? — Barry Sookman takes an in-depth look at the Flava Works decision. Worth the read especially for the comparison between the decision and similar decisions in jurisdictions outside the US.
Will Aereo’s Internet Streaming Service Survive Second Circuit Review? — Internet service Aereo, a cable company in all but name, recently survived a motion for preliminary injunction in federal court. With an appeal on that ruling pending, attorney Andrew Berger looks at the lower court’s decision and examines Aereo’s chances at the Second Circuit.
The Deceptive Politics of Piracy — Scott Cleland takes issue with New York Times technology columnist Nick Bilton’s article, “Internet pirates will always win.” Says Cleland, “Mr. Bilton is not the first, and won’t be the last, columnist to buy into the piracy lobby’s deceptive political narrative that fighting piracy is akin to a futile game of Whac-a-mole, so content creators should just unilaterally surrender the concept of market pricing of their content going forward and offer it free to the public on the Internet or at a minimal price that Internet pirates judge is ‘fair.’”
BMW’s Response to Ads for Its Brands on Pirate Sites — Kudos to automaker BMW for taking action after it was pointed out that ads for their products were being served on sites with infringing content. And kudos to readers of the Trichordist for bringing this issue to their attention. BMW has “not only stopped the ads from being served on the particular site in question but the incident triggered a complete audit of BMW’s digital buying practices. This includes a review of their current agreements with all of their partner ad networks, as well as a review of their current verification provider (Double Verify in this case).”
Google records show book scanning was aimed at Amazon — There seems to be a collective blindness toward tech companies in the tech press — with all this talk of “openness” and “sharing”, very little attention is paid to the fact that these companies pursue these policies because they are for-profit entities acting in their own best interests. Case in point: internal Google documents revealed through its litigation with the Authors Guild over its book-scanning project reveal that one of its motivations for making the decision to scan over 20 million books was that “we want web searchers interested in book content to come to Google not Amazon.”
New Congressional Report: IP Theft Is Hurting American Industries and Innovation — Says the MPAA, “A new report from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee this week sheds some light on the increase in intellectual property theft in recent years and underscores the damage it’s doing to businesses all across the US economy. Noting the many negative consequences of intellectual property theft on American industries, the report summarizes that, ‘Foreign infringement of intellectual property harms businesses by raising their costs, lowering revenue, and eroding profits.’”
Zoe Keating posts her online sales and streaming data — Musician Zoe Keating has made publicly available a Google Doc that breaks down her music-related earnings. Music Ally also links to an analysis of the report from the Atlantic. An interesting inside look at how one musician makes her living in the online economy.