The Financial Times editor, Lionel Barber, has announced plans to move the title to a digital-first strategy in a move he described as a "big cultural shift" for the business daily, and cut 35 jobs.

Barber said the FT will make a net headcount reduction of 25 – after hiring 10 journalists for digital roles – in an effort to save £1.6m this year as part of the strategy, outlined to staff in a memo on Monday, seen by MediaGuardian. He added that the FT needed to be "reshaped for the digital age".

via Financial Times editor announces digital-first strategy | Media | guardian.co.uk.

Responses to Amazon.com's hire of Laurence Kirshbaum as publisher have varied from worried to fear of a “dampening” effect on competition among delegates at the BEA conference.

Word that started to spread Sunday night was confirmed first thing Monday morning with the announcement that Kirshbaum, former TimeWarner c.e.o.-turned-agent, would be heading up Amazon's publishing operation in New York.

Everybody knew that an Amazon push into frontlist publishing was coming: the move into original genre books and the cooperation with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt was not enough to satisfy the giant's ever-hungry maw. Highly-placed executives from New York houses have been migrating to Amazon for a while, and the company ratcheted up expectations after circulating a recruiting letter for various personnel a few weeks back. The question was only when.

The news spread swiftly around the Javits Center even though the exhibition floor was not yet open, the first day of BEA being devoted to conference sessions. For Kirshbaum, it seemed a natural: as Workman's Bob Miller put it, “Larry missed running the whole show. Being an agent just wasn't the same.”

Independent booksellers took the news in their stride: “it didn't surprise” outgoing ABA president Michael Tucker, whose store is in San Francisco. Another major indie bookseller, Elliott Bay's Rick Simonsen (on Amazon's home turf of Seattle), saw it being “of more concern to publishers than to booksellers at this point. Remember, most booksellers have to deal with B&N's Sterling [publishing subsidiary] already. And Amazon will now get trapped in the real world!”

The proprietor of a store much closer to New York, who preferred to talk on background, said that given the state of Borders, and the likely difficulties Amazon may encounter with B&N, indies might actually get higher discounts on the books Amazon publishes since they will need a bricks and mortar storefront.

What people on the publishing side are feeling—again, off the record for the most part—is worried. Publishers, already feeling squeezed, have been feeling even more so since Monday morning.

Agent Richard Curtis, who doubles as proprietor of E-Reads, one of the earliest e-publishing and POD reprinters of out-of-print books, said: “I think Larry is an iconic branded figure in the American book business and will be the perfect person to bring the old and new worlds of publishing together.

via Amazon’s Kirshbaum move could reduce competition—BEA | The Bookseller.

Slashdot Stories (10)

“Google has found a way to let iPhone owners use Google Voice, launching a Google Voice Web app that runs on iPhone 3.0 OS devices, as well as on Palm WebOS devices. The Google Voice application leverages HTML 5′s functionality for running sophisticated Web applications on a browser at speeds matching those of native applications, Google said. The Google Voice-iPhone conflict is one of several issues putting the companies on a collision course, the latest of which involves Apple potentially courting Microsoft to tap Bing as the iPhone’s default search.”

NYTimes.com

A Boston University student has been ordered to pay $675,000 to four record labels for illegally downloading and sharing music.

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.

Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum’s case was $4.5 million.

The case is only the nation’s second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial.

Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled a Minnesota woman must pay nearly $2 million for copyright infringement.

YouTube Biz Blog

Last week the world watched in wonder as Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s wedding party transformed a familiar and predictable tradition into something spontaneous and just flat-out fun. The video, set to R&B star Chris Brown’s hypnotic dance jam “Forever,” became an overnight sensation, accumulating more than 10 million views on YouTube in less than one week. But as with all great YouTube videos, there’s more to this story than simple view counts.

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights holders control their content on our site. The rights holders for “Forever” used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes. As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” — in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site:

This traffic is also very engaged — the click-through rate (CTR) on the “JK Wedding Entrance” video is 2x the average of other Click-to-Buy overlays on the site. And this newfound interest in downloading “Forever” goes beyond the viral video itself: “JK Wedding Entrance” also appears to have influenced the official “Forever” music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.

So, what does all of this mean? Despite compelling data and studies around consumer purchasing habits, many still question the promotional and bottom-line business value sites like YouTube provide artists. But in the last week, over a year after its release, Chris Brown’s “Forever” has again rocketed up the charts, reaching as high as #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list. We’ve seen similar successes in the past with partners like Monty Python.

One of our main goals at YouTube is to help content creators effectively make money from the distribution of their content online. That they can do so in a way that brings artists and our community together to create fun, spontaneous and inspiring works, is one of the best and most exciting things about YouTube.

Posted by Chris LaRosa, Technical Account Manager, and Ali Sandler, Music Partner Manager

The Becker-Posner Blog

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

I wonder if Judge Posner will stop writing his blog because I linked to his post.

Slashdot

“The NYTimes reported in their June 13, 1897 edition that ‘Canadian pirates’ were flooding the country
with spurious editions of the latest copyrighted popular songs. ‘They
use the mails to reach purchasers, so members of the American Music
Publishers Association assert, and as a result the legitimate music
publishing business of the United States has fallen off 50 per cent in
the past twelve months’ while the pirates published 5,000,000 copies of
songs in just one month. The Times added that pirates were publishing
sheet music at 2 cents to 5 cents per copy although the original
compositions sold for 20 to 40 cents per copy. But ‘American publishers
had held a conference’ and a ‘committee had been appointed to fight the
pirates’ by getting the ‘Post Office authorities to stop such mail
matter because it infringes the copyright law.’ Interestingly enough
the pirates of 1897 worked in league with Canadian newspapers that
published lists of songs to be sold, with a post office box address
belonging to the newspaper itself. Half the money went to pay the
newspapers’ advertising while the other half went to the pirates who
sent the music by mail.”“The NYTimes reported in their June 13, 1897 edition that ‘Canadian pirates’ were flooding the country with spurious editions of the latest copyrighted popular songs. ‘They use the mails to reach purchasers, so members of the American Music Publishers Association assert, and as a result the legitimate music publishing business of the United States has fallen off 50 per cent in the past twelve months’ while the pirates published 5,000,000 copies of songs in just one month. The Times added that pirates were publishing sheet music at 2 cents to 5 cents per copy although the original compositions sold for 20 to 40 cents per copy. But ‘American publishers had held a conference’ and a ‘committee had been appointed to fight the pirates’ by getting the ‘Post Office authorities to stop such mail matter because it infringes the copyright law.’ Interestingly enough the pirates of 1897 worked in league with Canadian newspapers that published lists of songs to be sold, with a post office box address belonging to the newspaper itself. Half the money went to pay the newspapers’ advertising while the other half went to the pirates who sent the music by mail.”

TorrentFreak

In Germany, the file-hosting service Rapidshare has handed over the personal details of alleged copyright infringers to several major record labels. The information is used to pursue legal action against the Rapidshare users and at least one alleged uploader saw his house raided.

Yahoo! Finance

A defense lawyer in the Pirate Bay file-sharing case said Thursday he will demand a retrial after the judge admitted he was a member of copyright protection organizations.

A Stockholm court last week convicted four men behind the notorious Web site of helping others commit copyright violations and gave them one-year prison sentences.

They also were ordered to pay damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million) to entertainment companies, including Warner Bros., Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures.

Peter Althin, who represented Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde in the case, said he would request a retrial after Judge Tomas Norstrom confirmed Swedish Radio reports that he was a member of two Swedish copyright groups.

Althin said that constituted a conflict of interest, especially considering that three people who represented the entertainment industry during the trial also held membership in one of the organizations.

The Local

nternet service providers refuse to cooperate with an entertainment industry group’s demand to shut down The Pirate Bay.

Following yesterday’s conviction of the four men connected with the popular file sharing site, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is demanding that Pirate Bay website be shut down.

But Internet service providers (ISPs) refuse to cooperate, reports the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

Neither has the judgement slowed down file sharing. Several minutes after the Stockholm District Court delivered the verdict, almost ten billion files were being downloaded.

The ISPs maintain that the ruling doesn’t apply to them.

“In part, this is not a legally binding decision, but above all, this is a judgement against Pirate Bay and nothing that effects any service provider. We will not take any action (to block) the contents if we are not compelled to do so,” Patrik Hiselius, a lawyer at Telia Sonera, told Svenska Dagbladet.

Bredbandsbolaget and Com Hem had the same reply. Jon Karlung, managing director of Bahnhofs, said the judgement does not change anything.

“We will not censor sites for our customers; that is not our job. I am against anything that contradicts the principle of a free and open Internet.”

Slashdot

Quantos writes with word that in Sweden, in addition to a drop in traffic following the introduction of the IPRED anti-file sharing law, the country also saw a doubling of legal downloads. “The sale of music via the Internet and mobile phones has increased by 100 percent since the Swedish anti-file sharing IPRED law entered into force last week, according to digital content provider InProdicon. ‘…I don’t know if this is only because of IPRED, but it is definitely a sign of a major change,’ said managing director Klas Brännström. InProdicon provides half of the downloaded tunes in Sweden via several online and mobile music services.” Meanwhile The Pirate Bay’s anticipated VPN service has seen over 113,000 requests for beta invitations since late last month; 80% are from Sweden. Traffic numbers may begin to rise again once the service goes live.

Fox fired up over ‘Wolverine’ review – Entertainment News, Technology News, Media – Variety

Has longtime Fox News entertainment blogger Roger Friedman been fired? It depends whom you ask.

On Saturday News Corp. released a statement saying the Hollywood gadfly had been “terminated.”

But on Sunday afternoon Friedman told Daily Variety that he had not been let go.

Fox News released its own missive when asked on Sunday afternoon if Friedman had been ousted. “This is an internal matter that we’re not prepared to discuss at this time,” a Fox News spokesperson said.

For its part, the studio weighed in Friday with its own statement, calling Friedman’s actions “reprehensible.”

Friedman came under fire for posting a review of a pirated version of 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Both Fox News and 20th Century Fox are divisions of parent company News Corp.

Friedman posted a review of the film Thursday, one day after an incomplete version of the tentpole was leaked on the Internet, a breach that occurred a month before the film’s release and that could potentially cost the studio millions in box office receipts.

After Friedman’s positive “Wolverine” review hit the Web, the fanboy blogging community, which had largely called for a boycott of any reviews of the film, immediately lobbied for Friedman’s dismissal.

RopeofSilicon.com, which posted a screen grab of Friedman’s item, echoed the sentiments of many bloggers when it wrote: “Where does FoxNews.com come up with the balls to publish a review of an unfinished illegal copy of a film their sister company is so desperately trying to squelch the existence of?”

As of Sunday afternoon, Friedman’s Fox 411 blog was still on FoxNews.com’s website; however, the offending “Wolverine” item had long since been pulled and deleted from the website’s cache.

The whole sequence of events looks like a case of corporate synergy gone awry, as three different divisions of News Corp. couldn’t even agree on the fate of Friedman.

Fox News’ boss Roger Ailes has strained relations with other News Corp. division execs, and, in fact, the entire Fox News division has an entirely different style than the rest of the company.

But Fox News is a cable ratings hotshot and contributes mightily to the conglom’s bottom line. Friedman’s posting was bound to cause friction between the two News Corp. divisions especially considering that Friedman’s Fox 411 blog is a top traffic draw for FoxNews.com.

Studio execs began to hear about Friedman’s post Friday and called for the matter to be addressed by its sister company, though stopped short of asking for Friedman’s ouster. The studio’s statement said: “We’ve just been made aware that Roger Friedman, a freelance columnist who writes Fox 411 on Foxnews.com — an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox — watched on the Internet and reviewed a stolen and unfinished version of ‘X-Men Organs: Wolverine.’ This behavior is reprehensible and we condemn this act categorically — whether the review is good or bad.”

Calling Foxnews.com an entirely separate company from 20th Century Fox was an interesting choice of words, given that they’re sibling companies.

It took another day — and a torrent of negative press aimed at News Corp. in the blogging community — before News Corp. took action. Late Saturday night, News Corp. released a statement saying: “Roger Friedman’s views in no way reflect the views of News Corp. We, along with 20th Century Fox Film Corp., have been a consistent leader in the fight against piracy and have zero tolerance for any action that encourages and promotes piracy. When we advised Fox News of the facts they took immediate action, removed the post, and promptly terminated Mr. Friedman.”

Technet

A Svédországban megalakult, önmagát Kalóz Pártnak nevező csoport elsősorban azok támogatására számíthat, akik a szellemi termékek megosztása, letöltése és másolása ellen kiszabott szigorú büntetések ellen tiltakoznak.

Mint az EUobserver írja, a svédek több mint 10 százaléka vesz részt valamilyen hálózati fájlcserélő tevékenységben, a 26-35 éves férfi korosztály esetében az arány eléri az 56 százalékot. Ez azt jelenti, hogy akár 1,3 millió is lehet azoknak a száma, akiket a bűnözővé nyilvánítás fenyeget.

A hobbikalózok a legkülönfélébb foglalkozási, képzettségi és korcsoportból kerülnek ki, ezért rendszeresen figyelik a szerzői jogok szabályozása terén történő változásokat, és várhatóan támogatni fogják a „hálózati radikálisokként” ismert jelölteket a júniusi európai parlamenti választásokon.

A Kalóz Párt fő célja az on-line kultúra vívmányainak díjtalan használata. Ennek részeként a párt követeli a copyright szabályozás alapvető megreformálását, a szabadalmi rendszer eltörlését, valamint az állampolgárok magánéletének és adatainak háboríthatatlanságát. A KP szerint ezek a célok megvalósíthatóak a mai Európában.

A Kalóz Párt növekvő népszerűségét jelzi, hogy támogatói és aktivistái száma messze meghaladja a Svédországban hagyományosan népszerű környezetvédő szervezetekét. A kalózjelöltek azt is remélik, hogy az EP-választásokon nagy létszámban tudnak mozgósítani olyan választókat is, akik egyébként passzívan viszonyulnak az uniós ügyekhez.

BBC NEWS | Technology

YouTube will not reverse its decision to block music videos to UK users despite a plea from the Performing Rights Society to change its mind.

It is removing all premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the PRS.

Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships said it remained committed to agreeing terms.

But such agreement needed to be done “at a rate which is sustainable to all”, he told the BBC.

Thousands of videos were made unavailable to YouTube users from late on 9 March.

Patrick Walker, YouTube’s director of video partnerships, told BBC News that the move was “regrettable” but that it continued to talk to the PRS.

“The more music videos YouTube streams, and the more popular those music videos are, the more money YouTube will generate to share with the PRS and its song writers. It’s a win-win arrangement.

YouTube, however, cannot be expected to engage in a business in which it loses money every time a music video is played – that is simply not a sustainable business model.” he said.

Steve Porter, head of the PRS, said he was “outraged… shocked and disappointed” by YouTube’s decision.

In a statement, Mr Porter said the move “punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent”.

The PRS has asked YouTube to reconsider its decision as a “matter of urgency”.

This action has been taken without any consultation with PRS for Music and in the middle of negotiations between the two parties
PRS statement

The body, which represents music publishers, added: “Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.

“This action has been taken without any consultation with PRS for Music and in the middle of negotiations between the two parties.”

The Music Publishers Association (MPA) joined with the PRS is urging Google to rethink.

“Music publishers are in the business of getting their music heard by as wide an audience as possible, and websites such as YouTube rely on this music to attract traffic. It is difficult to see how anyone’s interests are served by denying the YouTube community the content they most enjoy,” said MPA chief executive Stephen Navin.

Lord Carter, the UK’s Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, has also waded into the debate.

Giving evidence before the Business Select Committee the minister said he suspected a degree of “commercial posturing on the part of both parties” but said the row was indicative of a wider issue.

“It is an example of the question of how do you price and fund content in the digital world?” he said.

“We have had decades of content being funded in one way – via the license fee and advertising – and that model is changing at a rapid speed,” he told MPs.

Mr Walker told BBC News the PRS was seeking a rise in fees “many, many factors” higher than the previous agreement.

He said: “We feel we are so far apart that we have to remove content while we continue to negotiate with the PRS.”

“We are making the message public because it will be noticeable to users on the site.”

Consumers must be scratching their heads in amazement at such obstacles to delivering legal content in a timely and straightforward fashion.
Darren Waters, Technology editor, BBC News website

Read more on the Dot.Life blog

The majority of videos will be made inaccessible over the next two days.

YouTube pays a licence to the PRS which covers the streaming of music videos from three of the four major music labels and many independent labels.

Stream online

While deals with individual record labels cover the use of the visual element and sound recording in a music video, firms that want to stream online also have to have a separate deal with music publishers which covers the music and lyrics.

In the UK, the PRS acts as a collecting society on behalf of member publishers for licensing fees relating to use of music.

YouTube stressed that it continued to have “strong partnerships” with three of the four largest record labels in the world.

Mr Walker said the PRS was asking for a “prohibitive” rise in the cost of a new licence.

While not specifying the rate the PRS was seeking, he said: “It has to be a rate that can drive a business model. We are in the business for the long run and we want to drive the use of online video.

“The rate they are applying would mean we would lose significant amounts of money on every stream of a music video. It is not a reasonable rate to ask.”

New deal

YouTube has also complained of a lack of transparency by the PRS, saying the organisation would not specify exactly which artists would be covered by any new deal.

“That’s like asking a consumer to buy a blank CD without knowing what musicians are on it,” a statement from YouTube UK says on its official blog.

YouTube is the world’s most popular online video site but has been under increased pressure to generate more revenue since its purchase by Google for $1.65bn in 2006.

“We are not willing to do this [new licensing deal] at any cost,” said Mr Walker.

He said the issue was an industry-wide one and not just related to YouTube.

“By setting rates that don’t allow new business models to flourish, nobody wins.”

Services such as Pandora.com, MySpace UK and Imeem have also had issues securing licence deals in the UK in the past 12 months.

NYTimes.com

After years of futile efforts to stop digital pirates from copying its music, the music business has started to copy the pirates.

An entrance on Sunday at the music industry’s conference in France, where Nokia said it was expanding Comes With Music.

Online and mobile services offering listeners unlimited “free” access to millions of songs are set to proliferate in the coming months, according to music industry executives.

Unlike illegal file-sharing services, which the music industry says are responsible for billions of dollars in lost sales, these new offerings are perfectly legal. The services are not really free, but payment is included in the cost of, say, a new cellphone or a broadband Internet access contract, so the cost to the consumer is disguised. And, unlike pirate sites, these services provide revenue to the music companies.

“Two thousand nine should be the year when the music industry stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb,” said Feargal Sharkey, a former punk rocker who now heads UK Music, a trade group for the British music industry.

David Barrett says on Pho

Mininova, founded in January 2005, soon became one of the most successful torrent sites. The site has grown steadily over recent months, and for a few weeks now the millions of daily users have been downloading well over 10 million torrents a day.

In 2008 the site passed several milestones, and in December Mininova broke a new record of 44.7 million unique visitors in one month. More users download more torrents, and just about every three to four months the site added another million torrent downloads to its counter. Today, just a few days into 2009, Mininova is close to recording the 7 billionth download, a double up compared to a year ago.

Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that he expects this growth to continue in the new year. “Traffic is still growing according to Quantcast and Google Analytics. Unless something drastically changes, I see no reason why this will be different in 2009,” he commented. – Torrentfreak

In comparison, iTunes traffic:

• iTunes has now sold six billion songs (it crossed the 5 billion mark last June).
• Over 10 million different tracks are available on iTunes.
• Starting today, 8 million songs are DRM-free, and all 10 million will be DRM free by the end of March.
• There are now over 75 million accounts on iTunes linked to credit cards.
• In fiscal year 2008, Apple sold 9.7 million Macs
• Mac sales grew twice as fast as the overall PC market.

The last billion songs took about five and half months to sell, which was the same pace more or less that it took Apple to get to its fourth billion (January, 2008) and fifth billion songs (June, 2008). So iTunes sales are no longer accelerating, despite many more iPhones and iPods out there. It makes you wonder what the saturation point is for consumers buying songs from iTunes. One thing to cheer about, DRM is now officially dead (it looks like Apple traded variable pricing for getting rid of DRM), but I’m not sure that is going to spur sales much. – Techcrunch

Telegraph

The extremely rare account chronicles a three-year round-the world voyage of the swashbuckling privateer Capt Woodes Rogers, who made a fortune pillaging from pirate ships and Spanish galleons.

During that journey, Rogers, who was a friend of the author Daniel Defoe, even stopped off at a remote Pacific island and found castaway Alexander Selkirk, who inspired the character and book Robinson Crusoe. He said he found him “wild-looking” and wearing “goatskins”, adding: “He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible and books.”

Rogers, who left Britain in 1708, had been tasked with “victimising” pirates targeting his fellow British merchants.

Commanding two 36-gun ships, the Duke and the Duchess, and 333 men, he sailed the South Seas, the East Indies and the Cape of Good Hope, going about his task with great gusto.

His finest catch was the prized vessel The Great Manila, a Spanish trading ship that sailed across the Pacific with a valuable cargo, including precious stones and exotic silks worth $2 million.

In 1717, he was appointed the governor of the Behamas by King George I and played a major role in ridding the islands of 2,000 pirates, including Edward Teach, also called Blackbeard. He was pursued by Rogers’ forces and killed.

The slogan of his epic voyage, “Piracy expelled, commerce restored”, remained the islands’ own motto until independence was declared in 1973.

It is thought only a hundred copies of his book, A Cruising Voyage Around the World, were printed seven years after Rogers completed his odyssey. One was recently found in a loft in Bristol, where Rogers’ was based, and is expected to fetch £3,000 when it is auctioned on January 21st.

Recording Industry vs. The People

In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the defendant has moved for all court proceedings to be televised over the internet through Courtroom View Network. The motion argues:

Information
is the currency of democracy, sunshine laws open government. The
federal court is open not only as a court of justice but a forum of
civic education. WE the PEOPLE are the ultimate check in our
constitutional system of checks and balances, we the people of the
integrated media space opened and connected by the net in a public
domain. Net access will allow an intelligent public domain to shape
itself by attending and engaging in a public trial of issues
conflicting our society.

Net access to this litigation will
allow an interested and growingly sophisticated public to understand
the RIAA’s education campaign. Surely education is the purpose of the
Digital Deterrence Act of 1999, the constitutionality of which we are
challenging. How can RIAA object? Yet they do, fear of sunlight shone
upon them.

Net access will allow demonstration by the parties to
the jury of the nature and context of the copyright infringement with
which Joel Tenenbaum is charged.

Net access will allow an
intelligent public domain to shape itself by attending and engaging a
public trial prosecuted by a dying CD industry against a defendant who
did what comes naturally to digital kids.

Net access will allow
educational and public media institutions to build a digital archive
and resource for understanding law akin to Jonathan Harr’s A Civil
Action reconceived in execution for legal pedagogy in a digital age,
Another Civil Action. The immediacy of net-based access to court
opinions already allows lawyers, professors, students, and reporters to
better keep abreast of the most recent legal developments, but none
with the immediacy the Net allows.

If the motion is granted, it will be the first RIAA case of which we are aware to be televised.

Motion and memorandum of law in support of internet audio-visual coverage
Declaration of John Shin
Declaration of Charles Nesson

Zeropiad

Kevin Bermeister who, along with Nikki Hemming, created the KaZaA file-sharing software and was sued for millions by the RIAA from 2004 to 2006, has now partnered with Michael Speck who ran the RIAA’s case as the head of its anti-piracy arm, Music Industry Piracy Investigations, have teamed up at Brilliant Digital Entertainment to fight online piracy.

The company has developed software which will run on an ISPs network
and enable the “instantaneous conversion of infringing activity into
legitimate content transactions.” In other words, instead of seeing
search results for illegally free copyrighted material users will
instead see legal copies available for instant purchase.

The incentive for the ISPs to run the software is that they are
promised a share of the revenue. The legal download is delivered by the
ISP which then simply adds a charge for it to the customer’s monthly
Internet bill.

“When the architecture of the internet that has our technology
recognises one of those proven illicit files, it blocks it, disconnects
the link to it and adds to the search results the opportunity to
purchase the legitimate material,” said Mr. Speck.

“At that point there is no other information collected – the entire
action revolves around the identification of the content and action
taken against illicit content; there’s an absolute protection of
privacy.”

NYTimes.com

so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”

The piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago, Somali officials said, as a response to illegal fishing. Somalia’s central government imploded in 1991, casting the country into chaos. With no patrols along the shoreline, Somalia’s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.

“From there, they got greedy,” said Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. “They starting attacking everyone.”