Morrissey would like it to be known that he has not been consulted by EMI/HMV/Parlophone with regards to two forthcoming boxed sets of Morrissey singles. Morrissey does not approve such releases and would ask people not to bother buying them. Morrissey receives no royalty payments from EMI for any back catalogue, and has not received a royalty from EMI since 1992. Morrissey also does not approve of, and was not consulted on, the Rhino box of Smiths CDs, or the Warner releases of Smiths LPs on 180 gramme vinyl. Morrissey last received a royalty payment from Warners ten years ago, and, once again, he would ask people not to bother buying the reissued LPs or CDs.
A Dutch court ruled Thursday that three men connected with The Pirate Bay Web site must block traffic between it and the Netherlands within 10 days.
The written ruling by Judge Wil Tonkens concludes that the men have control over the site and ordered them “each separately and together, to stop and keep stopped the infringements on copyright and related rights of Stichting Brein in the Netherlands,” or face a charge of euro30,000 ($42,000) per day.
Stichting Brein is a Dutch-based organization funded by various copyright holder groups that brought the civil suit against The Pirate Bay.
It was not clear how the court expected the site’s operators to block traffic to the site, or whether it can enforce its order if they decline or are unable to comply.
“The Pirate Bay is not a legal person who can be summoned, but a cooperative,” the ruling noted.
The Pirate Bay provides an index to BitTorrent files, which can be used for trading media such as movies, music and computer games. The site has more than 20 million users globally.
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned. 1984A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.
But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.
This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.
As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?
The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
“…Sales of his recordings through Sony’s music unit have generated more than $300 million in royalties for Mr. Jackson since the early 1980’s.”
Want to know why we have a zombieconomy? Because the beancounters killed the incentives to create real value.
Let’s use MJ’s tragic death as a mini case-study. $300 million over, for example, 25 years? That’s $12 million a year.
I’m deliberately leaving out ads, endorsements, concerts, etc., to focus on the the structural problems in one industry: music.
If the world’s biggest pop star only made $12 million a year from his recordings, why would anyone make serious music? Where did the rest of the money go? Why, straight into record labels’ pockets. Did they make better music with it? Nope — they made Britney and Lady GaGa. And that’s how they killed themselves: by underinvesting in quality, to rake in the take.
Wait a second — that sounds familiar. You can add back in the endorsements, etc. now — they only double the figure: to about $25 million.
If the world’s biggest pop star only made $25 million a year in total, something’s very, very wrong. Where’s the rest of the money? Why can’t a resource as scarce as the King of Pop capture more value?
After all, that’s not even mega-rich.
The world’s top hedge fund “managers” regularly pull in hundreds of millions. That’s an order of magnitude difference.
No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or [insert beancounter here]. There’s no money left in anything else.
That’s the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don’t reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.
That ’s not an economy: it’s just a game of musical chairs.
Hence, no new finance, healthcare, educational, auto, or, yes, music, industry — for decades.
“…Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y’alls neighborhood.”
Indeed. Everytime you look at today’s economic landscape — you should see the Thriller video playing in your head. Because what we’ve built is a zombieconomy, where little net value is created.
And MJ’s death-by-financial-desperation should be a case study in that zombieconomy if ever there was one. Yes, he spent money on absurdly ludicrous stuff. But if top hedge fund managers can do it — why couldn’t the world’s most famous singer?
PS — The ultimate irony? I can’t even link to the Thriller video. It’s unavailable on YouTube in the UK…”due to copyright restrictions”. Lulz.
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire)
appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in
public, you’re violating copyright law by “publicly performing” it
without a license. At least that’s the import of a brief [2.5mb PDF] it filed in ASCAP’s court battle with mobile phone giant AT&T.
This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who
have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to
the music industry’s bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?
Hungary will remain on the Watch List in 2009. Hungary’s National Board Against Counterfeiting and Piracy, established in January 2008, has promoted collaboration on IPR issues between the Government and the private sector, and issued a two-year IPR strategy to combat counterfeiting and piracy. The United States urges Hungary to take concrete steps to implement its IPR strategy and to improve its IPR enforcement regime. Further improvements are needed to ensure that prosecutors follow through with cases against IP infringers, and that judges are encouraged to impose deterrent-level sentences for civil and criminal IP infringement.
U.S. copyright industries also report that Internet piracy in Hungary is a major problem, and note that the Hungarian Government should provide adequate resources to its law enforcement authorities to combat IPR crime, especially on the Internet. The United States will continue to work with the Hungarian Government to address these IPR concerns.
A filmstúdiók a gatyáját is leperlik annak a francia postásnak, aki részletesen leírta a weboldalán, hogy miként kell letölteni a filmek kalózmásolatait.
Egy francia bíróság 130 ezer euró, azaz körülbelül 39 millió forint kártérítés megfizetésére kötelezte Sébastien Budin postást, akit azzal vádoltak, hogy illegális filmletöltéshez nyújtott segítséget portálján. A 26 éves filmrajongó az általa létrehozott stationdivx.com webodalra feltette kedvenc filmjeinek az adatait, és azokat a kulcsszavakat, amikkel más rajongók könnyen letölthették a kalózportálokról a filmeket.
A 20minutes.fr portál jelentése szerint a stationdivx.com több mint egy éven át segítette a letöltőket, és a 130 ezer eurót a 20th Century fox, a Warner, a Disney és a többi filmgyár követelte Sébastien Budintól.
A postás fellebbezett az ítélet ellen, és azzal védekezett, hogy ugyanazokat a kulcsszavakat a Google-on is meg lehet találni. Szerinte nem sértett törvényt, csak más filmrajongóknak akart segíteni, önzetlenül. A felsőbb fórum döntésére váró Sébastien Budin segítseteknekem (www.soutenezmoi.free.fr [1]) címen új portált nyitott
Although a lot of labels are facing serious problems these days, they seem to be incapable of starting meaningful partnerships with more than a few worldwide players. You would think that when the end nears they would come out of their shells and start creating new formats and platforms themselves and with others. But the opposite seems to be true. Their focus is getting even shorter and cash is the only king. That really did it for me. After 9 years of trying we still do not have the fuel to keep our service alive: rights to record the majority of concerts in our venues.
When BuckCherry found out that their latest single had leaked on BitTorrent, they didn’t try to cover this up, or take the file down. No, instead, they issued a press release (update: the press release has been removed, Google cache), where they stated: “Honestly, we hate it when this s*** happens, because we want our FANS to have any new songs first.”
This is strange to say the least. Not only because their label, Atlantic Records, is known to release (and spam) tracks for free on BitTorrent sites, but also because the press release was more about promoting the band than the actual leak. Without any hard evidence, we suggested that this leak may have been set up to get some free promotion and publicity, which BuckCherry seems to need.
Out of curiosity, we decided to follow this up, to see if this was indeed the case. With some help of a user in the community, we tracked down some of the initial seeders of the torrent. A BitTorrent site insider was kind enough to help us out, because BitTorrent is not supposed to be “abused” like this, and confirmed that the IP of one of the early seeders did indeed belong to the person who uploaded the torrent file.
It turns out that the uploader, a New York resident, had only uploaded one torrent, the BuckCherry track. When we entered the IP-address into the Wiki-scanner, we found out that the person in question had edited the BuckCherry wikipedia entry, and added the name of the band manager to another page.
This confirmed our suspicions, but it was not quite enough, since it could be an overly obsessed fan (if they have fans). So, we decided to send the band manager, Josh Klemme – who happens to live in New York – an email to ask for his opinion on our findings. Klemme, replied to our email within a few hours, and surprisingly enough his IP-address was the same as the uploader.
When the Yahoo! Music Store closes its doors this fall, the company announced today, past customers dependent on their music “phoning home” to get license approval before playing are out of luck. They’ll be able to continue playing purchased tracks on a single computer, until they make any changes to their operating system.
Anyone who persists in illicit downloading of music or films will be barred from broadband access under a controversial new law that makes France a pioneer in combating internet piracy.
“There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,” President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts.
Under a cross-industry agreement, internet service providers (ISPs) must cut off access for up to a year for third-time offenders.
The Mayor of Budapest has convened a conference on the new anti-graffiti measures of the city. I was invited to give a talk, in which I tried to argue that graffiti is a like fever. It is not the malady itself. It is a sign of deep running problems in society. Fighting against graffiti is like trying to treat cancer with antidepressants. Fruitless.
For the first time, Spain and Greece join usual suspects Russia, China, Canada and Mexico on a congressional list of countries with the highest levels of piracy.
The Intl. Antipiracy Caucus issued Thursday its annual list of countries “based on levels of piracy and the need for government intervention in lawmaking, enforcement and prosecution of intellectual property theft,” according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which supports the caucus.
The list is essentially Congress’ smaller-scale version of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual 301 Report. But unlike the 301 Report, the caucus list does not carry with it the authority directly to affect trade relations with any countries.
Still, the MPAA and the Recording Industry Assn. of America hailed the list, and Hollywood particularly emphasized the inclusion of Spain.
“The Spanish government’s persistent failure to address Spain’s epidemic Internet piracy problem, which is wreaking havoc on the legitimate market, has caused Spain to appear on the list,” the MPAA said.
The RIAA said: “Joining China and Russia in ‘the ignominious three’ is Canada, which, notwithstanding numerous public announcements, has failed to join the rest of its partners in the developed world in modernizing its copyright laws to address the challenges — and to seize the opportunities — of the digital age.”
A 25-year-old Brooklyn man has been found guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement in what the Recording Industry Association of America describes as the first-ever federal trial for online criminal copyright infringement primarily featuring music.
Barry Gitarts was convicted Thursday by a federal jury in Virginia, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. He now faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and three years of supervised release. In addition, he must “make full restitution” to record labels.
This is no mere file sharing case, so if you share the odd file now and again, you don’t need to worry about facing charges like this. Under the pseudonym “Dextro,” Gitarts was charged with administering a server in Texas for an underground file sharing group called Apocalypse Production Crew.
APC members traded music, games, movies and software amongst themselves but trial testimony portrayed APC as what the RIAA termed a “first provider” or “release group” of pirated content.
According to the RIAA, evidence presented in the case showed that he received payment from the leader of the group in return for this work.
Hollywood has been granted another victory in its war against piracy, this time at the expense of two linking sites that the Motion Picture Association of America believes profited from enabling copyright infringement. Both ShowStash.net and Cinematube.net have been hit with multimillion dollar judgments recently for copyright infringement of various movies and TV shows.
Even though ShowStash and Cinematube didn’t host any of these files, both were found guilty of contributory copyright infringement, according to the judges’ opinions, because they searched for, identified, collected, and indexed links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows. Aside from monetary damages, both sites are now prohibited from engaging in further activity that would infringe upon the studios’ work.
The damages totaled $2.7 million for ShowStash and $1.3 million for Cinematube, neither of which were particularly well-known to the general Internet community. The MPAA doesn’t seem to care much that it gives free publicity to these tiny sites when it makes announcements of its litigation plans, however. The organization apparently hopes that others will merely feel threatened by the prospect of paying out millions of dollars and shut down voluntarily.
Harsányi László, a Nemzeti Kulturális Alap elnöke, a rettenetesen kommunikált, internetre kivetendő kulturális járulék ötletgazdája az MTV Este című műsorában a következőket mondta:
Havi 20-50 forint havi többlet költségért, amit az előfizető fizet továbbra is ingyen lehet letölteni zenét, filmet.
Bullshit, mondja erre az amerikai. Miért?
Az Igazségügyi és Rendészeti minisztériumban ezekben a napokban zajlik a szerzői jogi törvény módosítása (IRM/EUJFO/460-15 /2008), mely érinti a magáncélú másolatok kérdését is. Az eredeti előterjesztésben a következő javaslat szerepel:
“Az SzJSzT 17/06. számú szakértői véleménye és számos szakirodalmi forrás szerint a nemzetközi, közösségi és hazai szerzői jogi szabályozásból következik, hogy a jogellenes forrásból történő magáncélú másolás egyetlen esetben sem megengedett, sem szabad felhasználásként, sem pedig a jogdíjigényre való korlátozás alapján. Ennek az álláspontnak az egyértelművé tételét végzi el a 35. § (8) bekezdésének módosítása.[...]A 35. § új (8) bekezdése értelmében a 35. § (4) bekezdésében meghatározott célokra történő többszörözések is csak jogszerűen létrejött műpéldányról vagy a nyilvánossághoz jogszerűen közvetített műről történhetnek.”
E javaslat az egyeztetési folyamatban úgy finomodott, hogy csak akkor számít majd jogsértőnek az internetről letöltő felhasználó, ha tudta, vagy tudnia kellett volna, hogy a forrás, ahonnan a másolatot készítette, illegálisan lett közzétéve. Hogy mi az, amiről egy átlagos felhasználónak tudnia kellene azt majd a bíróság dönti el hónapok alatt.
Harsányi:igazság 0:1, a félidőben.
Merthogy mitől lehetnének legálisak az internetes letöltések, így a p2p hálózatok is? Ha jogosultak, az őket képviselő szervezeteken (a közös jogkezelőkön) keresztül, vagy egyénileg, díj ellenében engedélyeznék a felhasználást (letöltést és feltöltést). Azaz ha ugyanez az összeg a jogosultak javaslatára az ő zsebükbe folyna, cserébe ők engedélyezhetnék a felhasználást. Erről természetesen szó nincs, ahogy az NKA által elosztott kulturális járuléknak sincs semmi köze a jogosultaknak járó díjhoz.
Harsányi:igazság 0:2
A kérdés immár csak az, hogy a fenti kijelentés nyelvbotlás volt, vagy inkább annak a jele, hogy a magyar kulturális ellátórendszer egyik erős emberének fogalma sincs arról a területről, amit irányítani és adóztatni szeretne.
