PoOPlist » IP

Long Reads: The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties

Mark Zip — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:33:45 +0000

Major music labels tell us that it is bad that people “steal content”, so they’ve come up with another revenue stream, accepting royalty payments which thay are not due, from people who are not authorised to collect them and then not giving it to the people for whom it was collected….

The Global Songwriter Shell Game: Why The Major Music Companies Are Getting Your Royalties | TuneCorner Music Blog.

Do You Sell Used Items? – Trans-Pacific Partnership Proposes the End of the Doctrine of First Sale

Mark Zip — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:05:23 +0000

IANAL, but I was fascinated by this in-depth history of the Doctrine of First Sale (which allows me to sell used records to anyone willing to pay) and analysis of the most recent attempt to blow it up.
It’s slightly heavy going, with quite a bit of law jargon, but the thrust of the piece leads to the remarkable conclusion that the TPP proposal, in an attempt to protect US industries which rely largely on copyrighted works, will actually drive then to make all copies abroad. At the same time it will finally kill the market for used books, records, CDs, DVDs, games and computer programs.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Proposes Copyright Suppression of Price Competition.

Slightly less technical coverage of the article at TechDirt

The Pirate Bay puts up “The Promo Bay” – Does your band want to be in front of a billion eyeballs?

Mark Zip — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:22:28 +0000

The Pirate Bay has many many many people looking at it every day. And now they are suggesting that perhaps it might be good for your band to be seen by those eyeballs. As Masnick asks “Would You Rather Fight Piracy… Or Have A Billion People Know You Exist?” – - See the easy-to-fill-in form here: The Promo Bay.

PoOPlist will go dark for 12 hours Wednesday January 18th

Mark Zip — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:14:01 +0000

Internet strike day is Wednesday January 18th. In a protest against the SOPA and PIPA legislation moving through the US Congress, many major sites (Wikipedia, Reddit, Internet Archive) will go dark for 12 hours. Of course, PoOPlist does not have the reach of these sites, but we want to do our small part to help.

Both of these pieces of legislation are harmful to the internet itself, to innovative business and will not achieve what their sponsors say they will. There are precise ways to prevent foreign websites from pirating US content and they are already written into law. There already ways to prevent counterfeit physical products. We do not need overly broadly written bills which conflate three different areas of law (physical, digital and technical).

You can read more at:

EFF.org SOPA Action page
AmericanCensorship.org
SopaStrike.com
“SOPA” Tag at Techdirt

Recording industry and SOPA/PIPA supporters: are you paying attention? Louis CK: Over $1 Million In Sales In Just 12 Days For DRM-Free Download

Mark Zip — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:05:38 +0000

Techdirt and the NY Times both report: Louis CK: Over $1 Million In Sales In Just 12 Days For DRM-Free Download.

This should be reported as yet another in the long list of projects which work because artists have used the CwF + RtB (“Connect with Fans and Reason to Buy”) model.

Yup, Connect with your Fans and give them a Reason to Buy seems so obvious to us, but we still have to endure the content industry telling us that we should pass SOPA/PIPA because it protects artists.

Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy.

ISPs to Disrupt Internet Access of Copyright Scofflaws

Mark Zip — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 23:03:31 +0000

ISPs to Disrupt Internet Access of Copyright Scofflaws (Threat Level Blog, wired.com)

And all on the say so of the content industry.

ISPs have said that they will not cut people off, and we are talking about a “six-strikes and you’re throttled-or-something” regime… but even the French 3 strikes law eventually involved the judiciary.

More coverage on ArsTechnica: Major ISPs agree to “six strikes” copyright enforcement plan.

Ars also has a breakdown of The six ways you can appeal new copyright “mitigation measures”

The best report ever on media piracy (now with video)

Mark Zip — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:01:20 +0000

Joe Karaganis, program director at the Social Science Research Council and vice president at the American Assembly discusses their report “Media Piracy in Emerging Economies.”

And another good write up about it here http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/29/the-best-report-ever-on-media-piracy/

5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional

Mark Zip — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:38:23 +0000

After the recent arrest of a man for owning a site which merely linked to potentially infringing content, TorrentFreak has a well reasoned look at some of the constitutional issues surrounding the recent domain name seizures: 5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional | TorrentFreak.

Shock! Major record label does the right thing! (.. or does it?)

Mark Zip — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:46:19 +0000

From the press release:

The American people, through the nation’s library, will receive a post-holiday gift of vintage sound recordings from one of the world’s largest recording companies. The Library of Congress and the Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today the donation of more than 200,000 historic master recordings—many long out-of-print or never released—to the Library’s Recorded Sound Section, which has more than 3 million sound recordings in its collections. Universal Music Group Donates Recordings to Library – The Library Today Library of Congress.

Note, though, that Universal retains the commercial rights and the copyright. So it seems as though the Library will do the digitizing, saving Universal a huge amount of money, and Universal gets to sell any of the results it thinks it can. Given that re-issue decisions are made on a standard cost/benefit basis, it seems that now that a substantial portion of the cost is assumed by the Library, Universal is more likely to try for commercial releases of items previously assumed to be marginal. So, overall, probably a net positive.

Also, apparently no Chess or Motown yet. While they are both owned by Universal, it appears that they are not included in the deal.

NYT coverage here: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/arts/music/10masters.html

NPR coverage here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/01/10/132803768/200-000-recordings-donated-to-library-of-congress (includes the statement “only 14% of pre-40′s music is commercially available today”. Which fits closely, of course, with Sturgeon’s Law)

Bono equates file-sharing with child porn. Idiot.

Mark Zip — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:56:23 +0000

Quoting:

But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.

Op-Ed Guest Columnist – Ten for the Next Ten – NYTimes.com