Talking Music, Freeloading, and “Cultural Self-Destruction” with Chris Ruen — Vol.1 Brooklyn sat down with Chris Ruen to discuss his new book Freeloading, coming out soon. An engaging interview that wheels from Adam Smith to 50 Shades of Grey. I can’t wait to read Ruen’s book.
© is good for artists, ask them— Bemuso takes issue with the idea, propounded here by Rick Falkvinge, that creators don’t benefit from legal protection of their works. “Rick Falkvinge says ‘Eliminate those gatekeepers and those 93% of the money go to artists instead – or at least, a significantly larger portion of it.’ But if the artists have no legal claim to their work how can they earn from it? We don’t have to guess how big business would behave in the absence of legal ownership. Sam Tarrantino (Grooveshark) makes money out of other people’s work. So does Kim Dotcom (MegaUpload). And so, of course, does Google and many others. They pay the artists nothing.”
Protect IPR, Protect Indonesia — When it comes to discussing international copyright protections, the case is often made that better protection only benefits more-developed countries, at the expense of lesser-developed countries. But that’s not the case, as this article from the Jakarta Post demonstrates. To give one example, “Because of lack of IPR protection, Indonesia has missed out on the booming global software business, with Bangalore in India positioning itself as Asia’s Sillicon Valley. Indonesia is not short of software expertise, but this industry cannot survive, let alone flourish, without the protection of the intellectual talent on which it is crucially based.”
Pandora Asks Users To Lobby Congress On Royalty Rates (Updated) — Forbes takes a look at the recently introduced Internet Radio Fairness Act. According to one analysist, the bill is “crazy”: “Pandora is effectively asking the government to intervene and reduce its cost structure, helping it remain a viable business because it knows its business model only works while running limited advertising. Why should the U.S. government allow musicians to be harmed simply to help Pandora and its investors generate enhanced returns?â€
Blogspot.com, a Bridge to Piracy? — Ellen Seidler takes a look at Google’s Blogger platform, home to many wonderful original blogs on a variety of subjects, but also home to many sites profitting off and driving traffic to illegal content. Asks Seidler, “Google’s Blogger platform makes website creation easy.  Why not do more to make operating a pirate site hard?”
Argument preview: Court tries again on copyright importation problem — The inimitable SCOTUSBlog takes a look at the upcoming arguments in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, where the Court is faced with the issue of how the Copyright Act’s first sale doctrine and §602’s prohibition on unauthorized importation interact. I’ve discussed the case on this site here and here.
Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston on the Ethics of Supporting Creators — CreativeAmerica highlights recent remarks by the TV star on piracy. Said Cranston in an interview with CNET, “I mean piracy is not good in any sense. You have artists hard at work and they need to be compensated for their work.” Also, I’m only up to Season 4, so no spoilers, plz.
Overall impact of unlicensed p2p file-sharing is negative — The IFPI shares some thoughts on the Google-funded Copy Culture Survey, a preview of which was released this week, making headlines for its unsurprising and meaningless conclusion that, when asked over telephone, US P2P users reported higher spending on legal music than non-P2P users. Notes the IFPI, “The overall impact of P2P use on music purchasing is negative, despite a small proportion of P2P users spending a lot on music.”
The Copyright Alert System: Moving to Implementation — The Center for Copyright Information announced this week that the Copyright Alert System, announced in July 2011, is going to begin rolling out among participating ISPs over the next two months. “The progressive series of alerts is designed to make consumers aware of activity that has occurred using their Internet accounts, educate them on how they can prevent such activity from happening again (for example, by securing home wireless networks or removing peer-to-peer software), and provide information about the growing number of ways to access digital content legally.”
5 Important Copyright Misconceptions that Linger — Jonathan Bailey lists some of the top misconceptions that are still most commonly seen online, including “fair use is magic” and “every song has one copyright.”
From Megashark To Some Guy Who Kills People – The Realities Of Being An Indie Filmmaker — Bleeding Cool interviews Jack Perez, writer and director of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, which is exactly what it sounds like, and director of Some Guy Who Kills People, also much like what it sounds like, though streets ahead of Mega Shark in terms of quality. Says Perez, “Regardless of whatever film it is I’m making, making any film is an opportunity, whether you connect with it intimately or not so I value the opportunity to make anything that I don’t have to pay for myself. The difference isn’t in how much of myself I put into the film, because I end up breaking my back on a dumb movie as much as on a movie that’s important to me because once I get there I don’t see anyway to do it other than make the best film I can make.“
Google’s blog subsidiaries are cesspools of illegal infringement and they know it. They’re also how they make money though, because they’re all also served with Google’s ads.
This is a blatant breaking of the law by Google, as there is nothing qualifying as an actual repeat infringer policy occurring here.
They need to be sued and soon.