Friday’s Endnotes – 05/10/13

May 10, 2013 · · Write a comment

Rhapsody adds liner notes, but how detailed is the information it holds? — As Helienne Lindvall points out, this is a welcome announcement, as the scores of individuals who lend their talents to the production of recorded music deserve recognition. The problem? Rhapsody will likely need to add this information itself, as it is not readily available.

New ways to support great content on YouTube — The long-awaited announcement from YouTube about paid subscription channels. “Starting today, we’re launching a pilot program for a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube with subscription fees starting at $0.99 per month. Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates. For example, Sesame Street will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches. And UFC fans can see classic fights, like a full version of their first event from UFC’s new channel.”

Permission, Privacy and Piracy: Where Creators and Consumers Meet — The Trichordist examines the intersection between privacy and piracy: “How are privacy and piracy related? It’s simple, both privacy and piracy revolve around how we view the importance of the individuals right to grant consent. An individual should have the right to grant the specific permissions to access information about us and how that information can be used.”

Kim Dotcom’s Truth = Nothing but Lies — Indie filmmaker Ellen Seidler takes on Kim Dotcom and his recent “white paper” defending Megaupload. Says Seidler, “Kim Dotcom is not Robin Hood and he’s not a hero. He’s a (wealthy) thief who, thanks to technical know-how and a black market business acumen, was able to exploit the work of content creators across the globe for his own, personal gain. Dotcom’s lies cloaked as ‘truth’ may gain him sympathy from his acolytes, but it won’t change the fact that stealing from others isn’t sharing, it’s theft.”

Why is Video Piracy Still Called A “Censorship” Problem? — “When we talk about video piracy, we’re talking about accessing someone’s creative property for free. It is true that you cannot copyright ideas but once those ideas are set down and given life as a recording, book, film, etc. they become the creator’s intellectual property. One may have issues with how long the protection should last, but that protection serves several important purposes: 1) It compensates the content providers and enables them to make a living; 2) It encourages people to continue producing content in hopes that they will be able to make a living.”

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Friday’s Endnotes – 04/19/13

April 19, 2013 · · 1 comment

Time to Think About ‘The Next Great Copyright Act’ in the US? — Emmanuel Legrand takes a thorough look at US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante’s recent call for broad copyright revision. “She admitted in her statement that the list of issues she wanted to tackle ‘is long’: ‘clarifying the scope of exclusive rights, revising exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives, addressing orphan works, accommodating persons who have print disabilities, providing guidance to educational institutions, exempting incidental copies in appropriate instances, updating enforcement provisions, providing guidance on statutory damages, reviewing the efficacy of the DMCA, assisting with small copyright claims, reforming the music marketplace, updating the framework for cable and satellite transmissions, encouraging new licensing regimes, and improving the systems of copyright registration and recordation.’”

Creators need copyright protection — Speaking of copyright revision, Neil Portnow, president and CEO of the Recording Academy, discusses three principles that should be central to any discussion of such an effort. “The more art is created, the more businesses that rely on content will succeed. It’s not content versus innovation — content drives innovation.”

“It Is What It Is” // an interview with Sound Fix owner James Bradley; store to close after nine years this saturday (Record Store Day) — Freeloading author Chris Ruen interviews the proprietor of an indie record store that has finally decided to close shop. “…we created this atmosphere that people warmed up to. The idea of a place where you can soak up the whole experience, where music was performed and sold and embraced and artists came there.”

Not all change is innovation — “Advertising, which yields about 90% of Google’s extraordinary wealth, has no independent, intrinsic value; it must be pegged to products and services that do have intrinsic value in the consumer market. We literally cannot all be in sales and marketing; some of us have to make things. Hence, any business practice that dilutes intrinsic value for the sake of advertising value is not only not innovative, but is a form of cannibal economics over the long term.”

How YouTube “Monetizes” Your Songs to Sell Illegal Goods — “They can pay $500,000,000 in punishment to the government, but they can’t quite manage to find a way to tell advertisers or songwriters that their songs or ads are being used to push drugs to YouTube’s young audience.”

If Only the Tech Industry Understood the Music Industry They Want to ‘Replace’… — Says Helienne Lindvall: “Copyright without control, without the ability to say no, creates a race to the bottom as far as being able to monetise “content” – it lines the pockets of the distributors (YouTube, The Pirate Bay et. al.) but not those who created it.”

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Friday’s Endnotes – 02/22/13

February 22, 2013 · · Write a comment

 But ultimately, it just seemed like having a potentially infinite universe of every album ever released cheapened the inherent value of any single album.

— What Happened to Diverse (and Other Questions Answered)?

Hollywood and Censorship in China — The New Yorker revisits MPAA CEO Chris Dodd’s remarks last week at the National Press Club regarding the explosive growth of US films in China, and the at-times contradictory relationship filmmakers have with Chinese censors.

I’m an Indie Music Publisher. Please Don’t Let Them Put Me Out of Business… — Monica Corton of indie music publisher Next Decade Entertainment responds to the article by the Consumer Electronics Association’s Gary Shapiro a few weeks back where he complained about how tech companies like Google are outgunned by songwriters in Congress.

Google’s Move to Demote Pirate Sites – Is It Really Working? — Nope.

Congress Launches Creative Rights Caucus — A very promising move from Reps. Chu (D-CA) and Coble (R-NC). “The launch of this Caucus comes at a critical time for songwriters and composers. Businesses that want to use copyrighted works without paying rightsholders fair compensation have waged a clever, well-funded campaign to delegitimize copyright protection in the public’s eyes. The Creative Rights Caucus could help bring much needed balance to the copyright debate by educating the public, and Congress, that copyright protection serves to protect the human rights, First Amendment rights, and property rights of individual creators, like songwriters and composers.”

How Your Harlem Shake Videos Make Money for the Original Artist — By now, you may have seen the latest internet fad, the Harlem Shake video, which is either really popular right now or so over, depending on how hip you are. Time reports on how recording artist Baauer and record label Mad Decent have been able to profit off the thousands of user-generated videos on YouTube featuring the song because of Google’s Content ID program.

The Vine Should Suffer, Not the Artist — David Newhoff takes on the popular conceit that good artists should suffer, as well as the role of copyright as incentive. “Opponents of copyright like to say that art existed before copyright, and this is technically true and functionally irrelevant. Copyright is not the reason the artist creates, and it by no means guarantees him a career any more than the right to pursue happiness guarantees happiness. But we could say that happiness existed before 1776. So, why is the right to seek this state of being that has no universal definition codified into American law and culture?  Whatever your individual answer may be, you would be on the road to understanding the relationship between the artist and money as well as the role of copyright as incentive.”

Honoring Our Founders, Remembering Our Principles — Former U.S. Rep. Mary Bono Mack pens this great Presidents’ Day piece on the importance of securing the rights of artists and creators. “Like private property rights, intellectual property preserves an individual’s right to the fruits of their intellectual labor. Our founding fathers considered intellectual property to be a fundamental component of property rights – so much so that they specifically protected intellectual property in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, empowering Congress ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.’”

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Friday’s Endnotes – 01/11/13

January 11, 2013 · · 2 comments

Paying Attention to the Echo Chamber at CES Copyright Panel Discussion — David Newhoff dissects the incredibly one-sided copyright panel held this past week during CES, paying particular attention to EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow’s remark that “The Pirate Bay is speech.”

Guess who’ll grab Facebook Sponsored Stories payout? (Hint: Not the victims) — Andrew Orlowski looks at the latest example of the current trend of tech companies paying out class-action settlement awards to the organizations that they fund anyway. This time, it’s Facebook, in connection with litigation over its “Sponsored Stories”, and the beneficiaries include the usual suspects, as well as, says Orlowski, “WiredSafety.org (whose founder serves on Facebook’s Cybersafety Advisory Board).”

Youtube Allows Pirate “Partners” to Profit From Illegal Movie Uploads — Since YouTube lifted its 20 minute limit on videos that could be uploaded, it has been easier to find full-length films on the site… and, as Ellen Seidler notes here, easier for people without rights to full-length films to upload and monetize them. Seidler floats the suggestion of some sort of verification process for videos over 20 minutes in length.

RapidShare: Traffic and Piracy Dipped After New Business Model Kicked In — Last year, filelocker RapidShare unveiled a set of changes to reduce copyright infringement through its service, along with an “anti-piracy manifesto” calling on similar services to join it. Fastforward to today and, according to Torrentfreak, the service has experienced both a drop in traffic and infringement. I found the following remark from the article particularly interesting: “The flipside in the short-term is that RapidShare could lose a bit more traffic, at least until it manages it balance the loss of traditional file-sharing traffic with its new image as an antipiracy-motivated Dropbox-style cloud-hosting business.” Kudos to Torrentfreak for admitting there is a distinction between legitimate cloud storage providers like Dropbox and those cyberlockers that are set up primarily to profit off infringement.

Levi’s Was First. Now, Several Major Brands Want to Pull Their Pirate Site Advertising… — Digital Music News reports that since the USC Annenberg Innovation Labs released its report on ad-funded piracy, “numerous brands” have contacted the report’s authors seeking advice on preventing their brands from showing up on sites with widescale infringement.

Reading Between The Lines Google Tells The Truth On Ad Supported Piracy, Now Let Markets Do Their Work — Speaking of the USC ad report, the Trichordist does an excellent job dissecting Google’s “elegant non-denial” made in response to the report’s conclusion that Google ads provide a major source of revenue for online piracy.

Hotfile, Megaupload, and the Future of Copyright on the Internet: What can Cyberlockers Tell Us About DMCA Reform? — Finally, have a look at third-year law student Ross Drath’s recent paper on secondary liability and cyberlockers. Drath examines issues that are currently facing courts in two major cyberlocker cases and then offers some recommendations for increasing both certainty and effectiveness in protecting copyrighted works online. Says Drath, “It would be naïve to expect that Internet piracy could somehow be completely eradicated. Like alcohol and drug abuse, these practices will surely continue regardless of the level at which they are regulated. But we can still do better than we are doing right now.”

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Friday’s Endnotes – 11/16/12

November 16, 2012 · · 1 comment

The record label is dead: long live the record label — Despite over a decade of predictions of its imminent demise, the record label still plays a vital role. As Francis Moore of the IFPI points out, from the group’s latest study, record labels worldwide invested $4.5 billion last year developing and promoting recording artists, and over 70% of unsigned musicians want to be signed to a label.

With new channel investments, YouTube becomes even more like TV — Last year, YouTube invested $100 million toward original content for its site. This week, it announced it will only continue to fund 30-40% of those channels, according to GigaOm, making its renewal rate strikingly close to that of broadcast TV.

The Real McCoy: Should Intellectual Property Rights be the New Civil Rights in America? — That’s the question Raymond Millien asks in this must-read article from IP Watchdog. Also check out part 2.

The Education of Senator Wyden: Don’t break the artists…You can’t get away with the old RIAA Booga Booga Booga or that you’ll make it up on volume — Oregon Senator Ron Wyden gave the keynote address at this week’s Future of Music Coalition Summit. As Chris Castle puts it here, “Senator Wyden’s speech writers wrote a speech for him to give in 1999. It does not play in 2012.”

Radio-active: Internet Broadcasting and Artist Compensation [VIDEO] — Also from the FOMC Summit, video of the panel discussion on the Internet Radio Fairness Act, featuring Kurt Hanson of AccuRadio.com, David Lowery of University of Georgia/Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven, Michael Petricone of the Consumer Electronics Association, Patricia Polach of the American Federation of Musicians, and Colin Rushing of SoundExchange.

A Musician’s Perspective on Pandora [PDF] — The ad appearing in Billboard Magazine this weekend, signed by 125 artists. The range of artists represented on the list is notable; many different genres and a mix of newer and more established musicians. Says the ad, “Let’s work this out as partners and continue to bring fans the great musical experience they rightly expect.”

How to avoid accidental dealings with pirates — David Hahn, writing at iMediaConnection, provides three suggestions for helping brands avoid providing revenue to illicit sites. Hahn notes, “As RTB continues to grow and scale, it’s increasingly difficult to appeal to a brand’s goodwill alone to stop appearing on torrent sites. It’s more than likely that these brand marketers have no idea their ads are supporting these sites, and they’re probably horrified when they learn of the placements.”

Why Doesn’t MTV Play Music Videos Anymore? [VIDEO] — From sketch comedy duo Brian and Maria comes this (slightly NSFW because of language) funny video explaining the lack of music on MTV.

Google’s Serial Obfuscation: Music Canada, BPI, Billboard Question Whether Google Has Really Lowered Pirate Sites Search Rankings — The Trichordist sees little evidence that search rankings for illegitimate sites have dropped since Google announced in August tweaks to its algorithm to lower the rank of sites receiving large numbers of takedown notices.

Copyright and Technology 2012 Conference — December 5th in New York City is the annual Copyright and Technology Conference. Featuring a keynote speech by Rob Levine and panel discussions on both technology and law and policy. Registration is currently open. Be sure to also check out David Newhoff’s podcast interview with conference chair Bill Rosenblatt.

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Friday’s Endnotes – 10/12/12

October 12, 2012 · · Comments Off

A Deeper Bond: A ‘Mad Men’ Insight On Revaluing Music — ReValue Music takes a cue from the scene from the first season of AMC’s Mad Men to ask how artists can help change the perceived value of music. “It is largely up to you, as the independent artist, to establish the way your audience determines the value of your work. Music is not a download. It is not a gadget or a widget. It is not a temporary utility that will only serve a limited purpose and then be disposed of. As an artist, you are not selling your latest track or album; you are selling something amazing, almost magical. You are selling a transcendent tapestry of sound that somehow facilitates the deepest of connections to one’s self and to others.”

Let the vinyl spin: my journey into record collecting — Along those same lines, Cameron Schaefer, of Vinyl + Cocktails, discusses how “dying of musical thirst in an ocean of MP3s,” led him to embrace reconnecting with music in the analog medium. Not that everyone need become vinyl purists, but well worth the read.

Lessons in Stealing Like an Artist — The Copyright Alliance’s Sandra Aistars points to a recent NY Times piece on fair use and creativity, highlighting poet Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like an Artist. Says Aistars, “The key according to Kleon, however, is not to copy or to imitate, but to transform what you steal so that you make it your own, and then send it back out into the world for others to embrace and react to.”

How Much do Google and Facebook Profit From Your Data? — Ars Technica reports on PrivacyFix, a new add-on for Firefox and Chrome, that calculates how much value your browsing behavior benefits the two tech giants. I haven’t personally tried it yet, but it sounds helpful, especially since it also lets you know which websites are tracking your behavior and feeding it back to the sites. PrivacyFix also apparently offers tips and techniques to help you adjust your privacy settings on Google and Facebook.

YouTube to serve niche tastes by adding channels — Google is spending $200 million this year promoting original programming on YouTube (as well as an undisclosed amount for production). Cat videos don’t pay the bills.

Sherman helps RIAA lighten up — An entertaining profile of RIAA CEO Cary Sherman over at Variety.

A Lesson from Steve — Chris Castle offers a few words to mark the one year anniversary of Jobs’ passing. “Not surprisingly, Steve’s choice to embrace the copyright of others has led to enormous financial reward for his company and his employees.  He took an already great company and made it greater–ultimate vindication for the ‘Newton,’ if you ask me–and he also put a lot of money into the hands of artists.”

WhoSampled Wins EMI Innovation Challenge — WhoSampled, an incredibly comprehensive database of songs that have been sampled and songs that have used samples, beat out other music apps to win EMI’s Innovation Challenge in London earlier this week.

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Friday’s Endnotes – 10/05/12

October 05, 2012 · · 2 comments

YouTube revamps content ID, defaults to DMCA in case of unresolved disputes — Leading the news this week is Google’s decision to add some flexibility to its Content ID appeals process. According to Google, “When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification.” It remains to be seen what the effect of this move will be, but, just for the record, Jonathan Bailey called it.

New paper on ISP liability: how to reconcile US and EU approaches? — The 1709 Blog points to an informative new paper comparing the US’s DMCA and the EU’s E-commerce Directive, both of which set up rules controlling liability for online service providers.

The Internet: Now just another special interest — Behind the shiny new Internet Association is the same old lobbying, as Lydia DePillis of The New Republic reports.

Internet Astroturf 3.0 — Scott Cleland offers a who’s who of groups “united in the common belief that users and groups of any kind should not have to pay, or ask for permission, to use others’ intellectual property online, because permission and payment to use intellectual property limits the sharing, creativity and innovation of others.”

Amanda Palmer’s Accidental Experiment with Real Communism — The New Yorker’s perspective on recent events involving Palmer. “Ideally, you don’t even know you are working at all. You think you are keeping up with friends, or networking, or saving the world. Or jamming with the band. And you are. But you are also laboring for someone else’s benefit without getting paid. And this, it turns out, was exactly Amanda Palmer’s hustle.”

HSI seizes 686 websites selling counterfeit medicine to unsuspecting consumers — The US ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations announced this week the seizure of nearly seven hundred domain names connected with the online illicit sale of fake drugs. The seizures are part of a larger global effort which so far has resulted in 79 arrests, the seizure of 3.7 million doses of counterfeit drugs, and the takedown of approximately 18,000 websites. No word yet on how much this will break the internet.

Protecting Creative and Intellectual Property on the Internet — Independent filmmaker Adam Lipsius recounts his experience with online piracy and the challenges it poses to similar creators. He ends by noting, “it is respect for all craftsmen and conjurers and job creators — and the expectation that society will protect their ability to profit legitimately from their work — that’s at stake when setting the balance on copyright protection in our digital era.”

NYC 2012 Conference: Keynote Speaker; Registration Open! — Bill Rosenblatt announces some of the panels and speakers who have been confirmed for the December 5th conference in NYC, and the event sounds promising. Registration is now open and discounted before November 1.

 

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Friday’s Endnotes – 09/28/12

September 28, 2012 · · Comments Off

Is it time to repair the DMCA? — That’s the question posed by Jonathan Bailey, who notes, as does a recent Trichordist piece, how far from the original intent of the 1998 law we’ve come. Bailey suggests five ways to repair the DMCA: 1) Improve transparency, 2) Reward sites that are proactive, 3) Punish sites that do less, 4) Get more serious about bad takedown notices, and 5) Streamline the sending and processing of notices.

Digitalmusic.org launches music API directory — Digitalmusic.org, the digital wing of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, recently launched an API directory as part of its suite of developer services that “was created to help address the issue of connecting developers with the quality content providers and services that can be the building blocks of their business.” The organization has been hard at work helping aspiring entrepreneurs build successful digital music-related services; this October it is also hosting an Entertainment Startup Academy in Washington, D.C

How much do artists make on YouTube — Over at Vox Indie, Ellen Seidler, points to a recent NPR story examining how much the video site compensates musicians. Notes Seidler, “Bottom line, musicians and filmmakers whose work is routinely uploaded to YouTube without permission can make some money from it. Time for Google to tell us exactly how much they are making. Anything less than full transparency is unacceptable.”

Justin Timberlake, Myspace owners discuss new relaunch — The internet was abuzz earlier this week after Myspace teased a completely new look and site in a video. Here, the site’s owners, including investor Timberlake, discuss the reboot of the once popular social networking site. While many are wondering whether a new UI and features will save the site, it should be noted that Myspace has already been quietly rebuilding; back in February, it announced that it was adding around 40,000 new users a day

The Tech World Gets a New Trade Association, Or “How to Read a DC Press Release” — With the official launch of the Internet Association this week, Bytegeist’s Jane Hamsher takes a closer look at the official announcement. Hamsher notes, “Nobody asked the rather obvious question: why an industry that spent $129 million on lobbying in 2011 needs yet another lobbing shop, especially when the Net Coalition already exists.”

Kickstarter Will Not Save Artists From the Entertainment Industry’s Shackles — A provocative article from Evgeny Morozov that looks at a recent academic study about the effect the fundraising site has had on the culture industry, particularly documentary filmmaking. According to the study’s author, campaign and issue-driven films are more likely to find success through this method of funding than other types of films, while films that involve significant legal risks (“an undercover investigation of the oil industry”, to use Morozov’s example) are less likely to be made through crowdfunding.

Maybe the Internet only wants one of everything — “How many search engines are there? For most of us, there’s only one — and it makes major news headlines even for putting a cute design on its logo.  How many general-purpose social networks do you use? Probably just one — or maybe you use them both, because technically, they actually do different things. Where do you crowdfund something? Duh. Where do you buy physical and now many digital objects? Mostly from here.”

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Friday’s Endnotes – 07/20/12

July 20, 2012 · · 1 comment

Thousands of YouTube partners now make six figures a year — Google has reported that thousands of Youtube creators are now making over six figures a year. Though many of these are established content producers, like major label artists, there are a lot of new, YouTube-native producers, who have found success thanks to significant investment from Google in promoting creators.

The DMCA is Broken… — The Trichordist presents a post from an indie label that has reported over 50,000 DMCA takedown notices in the past year. “If site operators want to hide behind ‘how do we know what’s infringing’… Well, here’s how, we’ll let you know! If we issue you a notice, you now know… do you think the title will suddenly not be infringing the next day, when re-uploaded by the same offending person? Seriously? Does Billy in Pittsburgh suddenly own the rights to a Radiohead album (for example)?”

Music piracy – who’s on the moral high ground? — Interesting piece from the BBC. Notable quote: “Google’s Theo Bertram strongly disputes that: ‘I’m happy to say Google doesn’t support piracy and does support freedom of expression,’ he told me. ‘Those are not in conflict.’”

Vincent Misiano on the Golden Age of Television — TV director of tons of shows, including West Wing, Law and Order, Medium, Warehouse 13, and White Collar, Vincent Misiano shares his thoughts on filmmaking and technology. I share his thoughts that we are currently living in a “golden age” of television. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a vehicle of storytelling throughout history that is so highly developed and fulfilling. As Misiano notes, we may be moving to a world that doesn’t support such storytelling, but that’s not a world I want to live in.

Kim Dotcom Extradition Judge Steps Down After Joking US Is ‘Enemy’ — The New Zealand judge who recently ruled that warrants executed in the Megaupload case were illegal has recused himself after making comments that his country’s long-term ally was an “enemy” at a copyright conference.

Viacom Top Lawyer Michael Fricklas on Piracy, YouTube and His Toughest Decisions (Q&A) — Congrats to Fricklas for receiving The Hollywood Reporter’s “Raising the Bar” award this year. THR has an interesting interview with the general counsel of Viacom.

Guest post: Dear Kim Ditcom — Independent filmmaker Ellen Seidler has a rebuttal to the Megaupload CEO’s “Letter to Hollywood” that is well worth a read. “For the record, the Internet does not belong to you and your ilk (no matter how many times you change your name).  The Internet belongs to us all–and that includes the millions of artists and creators who deserve a fair marketplace and an Internet that works for everyone.”

Memo to DOJ: Drop the Apple E-Books Suit — Senator Charles Schumer writes an insightful editorial on the DOJ’s anti-trust lawsuit involving e-books. “If publishers, authors and consumers are at the mercy of a single retailer that controls 90% of the market and can set rock-bottom prices, we will all suffer. Choice is critical in any market, but that is particularly true in cultural markets like books. The prospect that a single firm would control access to books should give any reader pause.”

Two Inane Suggestions for Compensating Artists Online — The Cynical Musician’s Faza explains why free culture guru’s Richard Stallman’s proposals for compensating artists online won’t work.

Google Exec: If You Want to Control the Pirates, Go After Their Money… — That was the response from Google in a “heated debate” between an exec from BPI. The response: “Once we’ve told Google 100,000 times that a particular site is illegal, we don’t think that site should be coming above iTunes and Spotify in the results.”

ICE-led IPR Center seizes 70 websites duping consumers into buying counterfeit merchandise — Kudos to ICE for launching the second phase of Operation in Our Sites, which targets the domain names of websites engaged in infringing activities. This latest round resulted in the seizure of 70 domain names engaged in selling a wide range of counterfeit goods. Many of the sites also displayed SSL Certificates, “further duping the consumer into thinking they were shopping on a legitimate website” and ”potentially putting customers’ financial information at risk,” according to the federal agency.

Weighing the costs of crowdfunding — The Future of Music Coalition provides some balance to the hype over crowdfunding, noting “that big pronouncements about how crowd-funding is ‘the future of music’ might be more than a bit inflated. Services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are an important new tool in musicians’ arsenals. But they work best for artists who already have a particularly tech-savvy, deep-pocketed audience — and who have a long history of putting in the kind of work necessary to build a strong social media following — which … can leave music itself on the back burner.”

How Free is Ruining Everything — Epic, must-read post from Eamonn Forde.

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Friday’s Endnotes – 06/22/12

June 22, 2012 · · 2 comments

How Can We Get Artists Paid On The Internet? A Chat With David Lowery — Perhaps you’ve seen David Lowery’s letter to Emily White, which lit up the internet this week. (My favorite headline in a response: Our Digital Innocence Just Died. And David Lowery Killed It…) Maria Bustillos of The Awl talked with Lowery about the piece and other issues relating to building a sustainable creative ecosystem in a digital age.

Changing copyright laws won’t solve everything — Helienne Lindvall reports on the “copyleft math” put to use by the UK’s Vince Cable regarding implementing that country’s Hargreaves Report. For example, according to the IPO, the proposed parody exemption would result in a £600m growth per year; quite astonishing in a country where the total value of the music industry is estimated “to be around £1.33bn.”

NMPA Inks Deal With Universal Music Group Over VEVO, YouTube Videos — Songwriters and music publishers will now get a cut of ad revenues from online music videos. According to Billboard: “The NMPA termed the agreement, which covers North America, a groundbreaking model licensing deal because it will allow  songwriters and music publishers to share in revenue from music videos. Up until now, while Youtube and VEVO were making money on their ad-supported services, indie music publishers had not shared in that revenue because the major labels long considered videos as promotional tools and never paid for licensing the songs used in the videos.”

Google moves to snuff sites that rip music from YouTube videos — PaidContent reports: “The company’s move against YouTube-Mp3 comes at the same time that it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on partnerships to create new YouTube channels that will offer original programming. Google may thus be seeking to protect its investment and reassure its partners that it can control the new distribution environment. Or the dispute may signal a more permanent shift in which Google begins to adopt the outlook of a copyright owner.” Chris Castle has another take: “Always be wary of anything from the tech press that begins ‘the free ride may be ending’ because that is never true.”

Stats And Figures On 30 Years Of Sampling [INFOGRAPHIC] — Hypebot presents this look at sampling from Whosampled, a site that catalogs the pedigree of samples since their introduction in music decades ago. Most surprising: the prevalance of samples is at an all-time high, a stat at odds with much IP scholarship.

German Court’s Verdict in Kino.to Case Supports an Internet that Works for Everyone  — The MPAA offers its take on the recent conviction of the ringleader of a major German streaming portal. Said the Association, the decision “paves the way for an internet that works for everyone by clearly recognizing that those who illegally distribute content are not in business for the greater good. The Kino.tv business model worked for its operators who made millions from ads but not for viewers whose privacy was compromised and not for the many thousands of creators and makers whose content was made available for free, denying them the value of their hard work and of the economic incentive to keep creating and making it.”

Why Can’t We Be Friends? — Sandra Aistars reflects on the future of conversation in a post-SOPA world. “We all want the internet to mirror the kind of society we profess to be. One that allows us to gather and exchange thoughts online, one that supports democracy and does not threaten others with exploitation, whether they be the unwary misled by scams, children and women exploited for the pleasure of others, or artists and creators who we neglect to compensate for their work. Just as a vibrant, open and free society cannot exist without empathy for our fellow travelers and mutual respect for basic rights and privileges, so too a healthy internet society must accept basic rules of the road.”

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