The author of this blog, James Robertson, passed away in April 2014. This blog is being maintained by David Buck (david@simberon.com).
The title I've used seems to be the operating assumption behind music label deals with digital music systems (such as Spotify). GigaOm has lots of details, but it boils down to this: "heads we win, tails you lose". The more I read about this stuff, the more I question the very concept of copyright. The basic idea seems sound, but I'm having a hard time seeing how artists would do worse under an utter free for all system.
The bizarro universe beast that is ACTA is still alive, and it looks like the power elites of the Western world want to ram it down all of our throats, regardless of how the law is supposed to work. Via Techdirt:
Despite serious Constitutional concerns in the US, and significant legal questions in the EU, it appears that the US and the EU, along with most of the other participants in the ACTA negotiations are planning to sign ACTA this weekend in Japan. In the US, this may very well lead to a Constitutional challenge. President Obama, via the USTR, is ignoring the Senate's oversight concerning treaties, by pretending ACTA is not a treaty, but rather an "executive agreement." Pretty much everyone else agrees that ACTA is a binding treaty -- in fact, EU negotiators have been quite vocal on that point.
All I can say is wow - the gall involved here is massive. If this thing is so important, it can go to the Senate and follow the process. The fact that the powers that be want to avoid that route is very, very telling.
Pass the popcorn - the copyright trolls at RightHaven are near bankruptcy:
Despite its backing by the billionaire Warren Stephens family, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC warned today it may have to file for bankruptcy because of a series of setbacks in its litigation campaign.
It's the very least that they deserve.
The drive to "protect" intellectual property is getting dumber, and it's not limited to the US - Look at what's happening in New Zealand:
The Government's Copyright Amendment Act comes into force today and anyone caught downloading copyrighted content illegally could face fines of up to $15,000 and have their internet cut off.
So say you run a Starbucks in New Zealand, and someone decides to download a few songs via bittorrent while they have a latte. That leaves Starbucks open to the penalties.
The unintended consequences of this are going to be really, really bad.
When everyone is a criminal, the net effect is that no one is. Consider France's 3 strikes law - in a nation of 65 million people:
The volume of alleged infringement is even higher than earlier reports suggested. More than 18 million complaints have been submitted so far, and Hadopi hasn't been able to keep up. So far, only 470,000 initial warning e-mails have been sent to French Internet users. Only a small fraction of those—about 20,000—have received second notices, and around 10 French Internet users have received their third "strike" and are now facing possible penalties.
Now, imagine that the RIAA or MPAA got what they wanted, a law like that here? How many people would the feds have to employ to keep up?
Technorati Tags: stupidity
It looks like the copyright holders in the movie industry are preparing to keep diving down the same rathole that the RIAA went down last decade - the "pound the end users of the product and see if that works" theory. Here's a good summary (read the whole piece though) from Slate:
If the studios were smart they'd go to the mat and create a massive one-stop shop for TV and movies, find a price point they can live with and then set programmers loose to make the thing as easy to use and ubiquitous as possible. Instead they've been wasting their time strong-arming the cable companies to help them on a new crusade against illegal downloaders—an unwieldy process that doesn't address the root problem and won't work.
Where have we heard that before?
I'm not saying that using illegal media is right. And of course it's free—the studios can't do anything about that. But does it have to be easier?
This problem isn't limited to the video industry, of course - back when I was at Cincom, I don't know how many conversations I had that went something like this:
Them: We can get $$$$ from these guys
Me:No, we can get $$ or $0, not $$$$
Them: Trust me, I know what I'm doing
.... and the inevitable result was... $0. That's the path the RIAA took, and it's the one that the MPAA seems bound and determined to follow. Apparently,they think this time is different
It looks like the major (US) ISP's are going to try something that might actually work, after years of the content owners pushing for really stupid stuff that didn't help:
The agreement puts heavy emphasis on "education," going so far as to recast this behavior as some "right to know" on the part of parents unaware of a child's P2P activity. According to today's announcement materials, the goal is to "educate and stop the alleged content theft in question, not to punish. No ISP wants to lose a customer or see a customer face legal trouble based on a misunderstanding, so the alert system provides every opportunity to set the record straight."
It would be much easier to see "education" focus as a principled stand by content owners if they hadn't spent years suing such end users, securing absurd multi-million dollar judgments in cases that they are still pursuing in court. As it is, the shift looks more like a pragmatic attempt to solve a real problem through less aggressive measures after the failure of scorched earth tactics.
Imagine how much better this would have worked had the RIAA and MPAA gone with this approach right off....
Looks like RightHaven is getting what it deserves:
A federal judge in Las Vegas today issued a potentially-devastating ruling against copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC, finding it doesn't have standing to sue over Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, that it has misled the court and threatening to impose sanctions against Righthaven.
This is welcome news, but it doesn't change my baseline theory - copyright and patent law in the US are fundamentally broken. Instead of encouraging innovation, they are encouraging trolling.
More stupid from the trolls, and the judges who don't understand technology well enough to smack them down:
On March 17, a federal judge in the District of Columbia gave the USCG permission to demand from Internet Service Providers the name, current and permanent addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail, and device Media Access Control (MAC) addresses of those accused of copy infringement. Subpoenas are expected to go out this week, according to Wired.
I'd guess that a decent sized minority of those addresses were used by people leaching internet service off of someone else's wifi. It's not as if that's particularly hard to do.
The absurdity of copyright law knows no bounds. After the Supreme Court hung 4-4, with one justice recused, the lower court ruling held:
Omega, of Switzerland, sued Costco for copyright infringement, because Costco was obtaining the watches from unauthorized European dealers that sold them far cheaper than U.S.-based Omega distributors. Omega copyrighted the watch design in the United States by imprinting the company’s emblem on the underside of the timepiece.
So with that, the clear incentive is to produce your goods outside the US, apply copyright via the method used in this case, and then sue all used goods stores out of existence.
You know how software is licensed? If this idea lasts, hardware will go the same way.
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