Looks Like Entertainment Industry Lobbyists Got To The Spanish Government

from the and-here-we-go-again dept

We had just been noting how Spanish courts seemed to be actually interpreting copyright law in a reasonable way, and slapping down industry attempts to abuse the laws. Of course, that couldn't last. It appears that Spain is now proposing new copyright laws that would bring its existing laws down the well-lobbied path of draconian punishment, increased third party liability and other mindless ideas that have more to do with propping up an old business model than encouraging the creation of new quality content. A bunch of professional content creators in Spain are organizing to protest these new rules, but do they stand a chance against the usual onslaught of industry lobbyists?

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Yet Another Nobel Prize Winner Says That Intellectual Property Is Harming Science

from the add-another-one-to-the-list dept

We've discussed in the past how Noble Prize winning economists have been worried about the impact of intellectual property laws, and how at least one Nobel Prize winning physicist is warning that strict intellectual property laws are harming science and innovation. Now we can add a Nobel Prize winning biologist to the list (his Nobel was for medicine). Sir John Sulston has written up a column for The Guardian explaining how intellectual property is "shackling" science:

The myth is that IP rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the clinic and marketplace. In reality, patents often suppress invention rather than promote it: drugs are "evergreened" when patents are on the verge of running out -- companies buy up the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them being turned into products. Moreover, the prices charged, especially for pharmaceuticals, are often grossly in excess of those required to cover costs and make reasonable profits.

He goes on to attack the massive growth in things like gene patents, which has resulted in: "research on certain genes [being] largely restricted to the companies that hold the patents, and tests involving them are marketed at prohibitive prices. We believe that this poses a very real danger to the development of science for the public good." He points to the long history of how scientific advance has come from collaboration and the sharing of knowledge, rather than the hoarding of it, and fears where things are heading now that knowledge is so often locked up:

For science to continue to flourish, it is necessary that the knowledge it generates be made freely and widely available. IP rights have the tendency to stifle access to knowledge and the free exchange of ideas that is essential to science. So, far from stimulating innovation and the dissemination of the benefits of science, IP all too often hampers scientific progress and restricts access to its products.

We keep hearing more and more people who recognize all of this speaking out against what is happening. But the politicians only seem to listen to the lawyers and the lobbyists who have every incentive to ignore the reality around them. How do we change that?

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Author Sherman Alexie's Rants On Colbert Against Ebooks, Piracy And 'Open Source Culture'

from the you-said-what-now? dept

On last night's Colbert Report, author Sherman Alexie spent most of the interview ranting against digital books and how "piracy" was destroying the book business. The whole thing was odd not just because of how uninformed it was, but also because he seemed to contradict himself multiple times. I haven't read any of Alexie's books, but if his logic is so twisted, it's difficult to think that his books are worth reading:

He starts out by insisting that he won't put his book on the Kindle or any digital book format because he's afraid of piracy -- but that makes no sense at all. By not giving readers what they want, he's actually encouraging more piracy. There are probably plenty of people actively willing to buy ebook versions of his book, and his response is that because of piracy, he won't offer it to them. How does this help? Those people now have more incentive to actually go and download an unauthorized copy of the book (and Alexie is fooling himself if he thinks they don't exist). How can not giving people what they're asking for and are willing to pay for be a smart business model?

He compares the book business to the music business, saying:

"When the music industry went digital, somewhere between 75 and 95% of music is pirated. Nobody makes money off their music any more. Everything is about live shows now."

First of all, it wasn't the industry that went digital. Music went online way before the industry even realized it, and one of the main reasons that the piracy rates are as high as they are (and his numbers are industry figures that aren't reliable at all) was because the industry held back for so long in giving people what they wanted: which is exactly what Alexie is now doing!

As for his claim that no one makes money off their music any more, that's obviously silly. He admits that they now make their money from live shows (which is making money off their music). And then later in the interview, he points out that one of the parts he enjoyed most about being a published author was doing live performances and readings of his works. In other words, he already does what he claims happened to the music industry. So why is he so worried about piracy? That's not clear at all.

He also seems rather uninformed about how file sharing has helped some authors.

I'd be really worried if I were Stephen King or James Patterson or a really big best seller that when their books become completely digitized, how easy it's going to be to pirate them.

Where to start....? First, Alexie doesn't seem to understand how book file sharing happens. It's not because the industry digitizes the books, but because others digitize those books, and, yes, they're most likely already available on file sharing networks, whether those authors released them in ebook form or not. It's not the official ebook they're sharing in most cases anyway.

Second, as for the claim that it will harm the biggest name authors most of all, Alexie might want to talk to Paulo Coehlo. Coehlo is the guy who quietly set up operations to "pirate" his own book and saw the sales of his physical books increase massively. Oh, and the book he chose to offer up via BitTorrent, The Alchemist is one of the best selling books of all time. Stephen King and James Patterson, by the way, do not have any books on that list -- though, to be fair, if you combine all of their books, King has sold more than Coehlo, and Patterson seems to be in a similar ballpark, probably selling slightly more than Coehlo, but both have published many more books.

Then, really strangely, he attacks "open source culture":

With the "open source culture" on the internet, the idea of ownership -- of artistic ownership -- goes away.

Now, beyond this just being flat out wrong about what "open source" means or what "open source culture" is, what's the most bizarre thing about this statement is who it's coming from. Alexie is most well-known for his writing about modern Native American life -- and Native Americans aren't exactly known for their strong believe in artistic ownership. In fact, much of the understanding of so-called "gift economies," which are sometimes (though not always accurately) used to describe the open source world are actually based on Native American gift giving culture of tribes in the Pacific Northwest, which is where Alexie is from.

Colbert actually does a good job pushing back on this, in his usual self-mocking manner, pointing out that sharing helps get the word out there, and the only reason he's so famous is because of how easily his content is shared via TV. Without that, he notes, he'd have to just go door to door shouting at people. To which Alexie responds: "I'm a fan of door to door shouting at people." Good luck with that.

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Warner Music's Royalty Statements: Works Of Fiction

from the too-much-joy dept

For years we've all heard the stories about how bad the major labels are at accounting for royalties they owe bands. There have certainly been a large number of lawsuits from artists claiming that this rather opaque accounting system is used to hide money from musicians, with various multi-platinum selling musicians claiming they never saw a dime of royalties from their albums, thanks to major label accounting. This is, of course, rather amazing in this day and age where technology allows for amazingly accurate accounting practices -- even for massively complex operations. But, then again, these are the major labels we're talking about, and they're often proud of their technical cluelessness.

Still, it's quite interesting to see a blog post, sent in by Quentin Hartman and written by the singer for the band Too Much Joy, Tim Quirk. Quirk is in an interesting position. Having been a moderately successful major label artist who is now an executive at digital music company Rhapsody, he's seen different sides of the business -- and in his must-read blog post, he details the absolute fiction that is a royalty statement from Warner Music Group -- leading to the flat-out false claim that Too Much Joy earned a grand total of $62.47 in digital royalties over five years across their three Warner albums. You really should read the whole thing, as it's quite detailed about how the major labels view most bands on their roster.

Back to my ridiculous Warner Bros. statement. As I flipped through its ten pages (seriously, it took ten pages to detail the $62.47 of income), I realized that Warner wasn't being evil, just careless and unconcerned -- an impression I confirmed a few days later when I spoke to a guy in their Royalties and Licensing department I am going to call Danny.

I asked Danny why there were no royalties at all listed from iTunes, and he said, "Huh. There are no domestic downloads on here at all. Only streams. And it has international downloads, but no international streams. I have no idea why." I asked Danny why the statement only seemed to list tracks from two of the three albums Warner had released -- an entire album was missing. He said they could only report back what the digital services had provided to them, and the services must not have reported any activity for those other songs. When I suggested that seemed unlikely -- that having every track from two albums listed by over a dozen different services, but zero tracks from a third album listed by any seemed more like an error on Warner's side, he said he'd look into it. As I asked more questions (Why do we get paid 50% of the income from all the tracks on one album, but only 35.7143% of the income from all the tracks on another? Why did 29 plays of a track on the late, lamented MusicMatch earn a total of 63 cents when 1,016 plays of the exact same track on MySpace earned only 23 cents?) he eventually got to the heart of the matter: :"We don't normally do this for unrecouped bands," he said. "But, I was told you'd asked."

As you hopefully know, with a major record label, the band gets an advance to record the album. From then on, the label no longer pays the band anything. Even though the band accrues royalties on albums sold, those royalties simply go towards repaying the advance. Most label bands never fully repay the advance, and are thus considered "unrecouped." This does not mean (as record label defenders will claim) that such bands were money losers for the label. The labels still take their own hefty cut from any album sales. They just also hang onto the tiny fraction of album sales that are officially designated for the actual musicians.

Basically, what Quirk notes, is that whether through malice or indifference (or a combination of both), the general major label attitude towards "unrecouped" bands is that the accounting is meaningless, so they don't even bother. That means they make massive mistakes -- such as the time Warner just happened to make a $10,000 mistake in Warner's favor, and then mocked Quirk for even caring about such a measly sum.

Now, when it came to digital revenue, for most artists, Warner apparently doesn't even bother to tell artists what their digital royalties are. They're unrecouped, so it doesn't matter in the minds of Warner execs. Quirk, by nature of also being an industry exec was able to (thanks to a chance meeting at a conference and 13 months of waiting) get Warner to agree to detail his digital earnings. But, because the band is unlikely to pay off the nearly $400,000 in "unrecouped" advance money, basically Warner did a slipshod job of it all. What this tells you is that Warner either has no serious accounting system to track this sort of thing or has mastered the art of obfuscating everything and purposely acting like their accounting department is run by six-year-olds. I'm not sure which is scarier.

Now, Quirk is reasonably clear that he's just as likely to attribute all of this to a combination of indifference and incompetence than to malice -- and there's nothing to indicate otherwise. But, you do have to ask how seriously anyone can take any of the ridiculous numbers that Warner Music Group or the RIAA toss around concerning the music industry and "losses" due to "piracy" and such, when it can't even put together an accounting system that can track (let alone accurately count) the most basic information that it is contractually obligated to both track and report. It also should highlight, for any bands who still actually think signing a major record label contract makes sense, how little regard major labels like Warner Music Group actually have for most of the artists on their label. As Quirk notes in discussing the $10,000 error:

When I caught this mistake, and brought it to the attention of someone with the power to correct it, he wasn't just befuddled by my anger -- he laughed at it. "$10,000 is nothing!" he chuckled.

If you're like most people -- especially people in unrecouped bands -- "nothing" is not a word you ever use in conjunction with a figure like "$10,000," but he seemed oblivious to that. "It's a rounding error. It happens all the time. Why are you so worked up?"

So, perhaps, the next time that Warner Music claims that it deserves $22,500 for a "pirated" song, someone will point out that according to Warner Music's own accountants, such numbers are really just a "rounding error" and there's no need to pay them. Somehow, I get the feeling that Warner Music will take a different view on such numbers about then.

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Free Content Undermines Democracy?

from the people-pay-you-for-this? dept

A journalism professor by the name of Tim Luckhurst is claiming that newspaper paywalls are needed to preserve democracy, and that free content online undermines democracy. We've heard this argument before, and it makes no more sense now than when it was first raised. The basic argument is that free content online isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay reporters, thus newspapers are going under and firing reporters. Thus, with fewer reporters, there are fewer people to watch the government and therefore corruption runs rampant. Or something like that.

Of course, there are so many fallacies wrapped up in this argument, it's difficult to even know where to start (though, one would have hoped that a journalism professor would have done the decent thing and checked into these things a bit more carefully before writing a silly opinion piece based on a variety of myths):

• Newspapers need readers to pay to survive. Not true. Not even close to true. First, newspapers have almost never made money from subscription fees or newsstand purchases. Those fees rarely even covered the cost of the newsprint and delivery. Newspapers have always made their money on advertising and classifieds (a form of advertising).
• Free content online is why newspapers are in trouble. Again, not true. In most cases, the publications that are in trouble are in that position because they took out tremendous amounts of debt. Most newspapers are actually still profitable on an operational basis, but aren't making enough to repay the debt. The problem was poor management thinking in believing that leveraging their futures to ridiculous levels made sense.
• Without old school newspapers, government corruption is not well covered. This one remains to be seen, but there is growing evidence that it, too, is not true. The power of the internet has made it such that many more people can hold our governments accountable by gaining a voice and speaking out against corruption or corruptive influences. It's not fixing the problem entirely, but then again, neither did newspapers. The fact is that it's much easier now to call attention to corruption, and there are more and more forums to help with that -- such as Wikileaks, combined with the ability to self publish or more easily contact those with a larger audience.
• Putting up a paywall will somehow fund more journalism. Again, remains to be seen, but there's little evidence to support this claim. There are numerous competing offerings providing news in the marketplace today. There is little indication that enough people are interested in paying directly for news to the level it would take to support news operations. Combine that with the decrease in ad revenue (the real source of revenue for most news organizations) from cutting off a large chunk of an audience, and it seems likely that these paywalls will actually serve to decrease overall revenue over the long term rather than increase it. It's not clear how that helps anyone.

On the whole, if one were to grade this professor's analysis, you'd have to give him a failing grade for basing an argument on outright falsehoods and unsupported statements.

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Games Workshop Goes After Its Biggest Fans With Takedown Order

from the when-will-they-learn dept

dave blevins points us to the unfortunate news that game publisher Games Workshop seems to be attacking its biggest fans by ordering the super popular site BoardGameGeek to takedown all fan-made player aids. Basically, the biggest fans of Game Workshop's games have been helping make those games better, including "scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces." Basically increasing the value of those games so that it's easier to play them and easier to keep playing them. And, in response, Games Workshop sends out its lawyers? How does that possibly make any sense at all?

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Entertainment Giants Looking At The Future... And See Cable?

from the future-hazy,-please-try-again dept

We've discussed in the past why we think that the cable companies' "TV Everywhere" strategy is destined to fail. If you don't recall, it's the way the cable companies are looking to respond to the rise of competition in the form of Hulu, Netflix, Redbox, Boxee and others -- not by offering something more compelling, but by putting up a giant wall around content and forcing you to keep your cable subscription (which fewer and fewer people seem to want) if you want to access TV shows online. Reid Rosefelt has a nice rant explaining why this won't work, pointing out (quite accurately) that all those competitors are winning because they deliver what people want, and locking things up doesn't make customers want cable any more:

Why do we enjoy free-with-ads sites like Hulu and Crackle? THEY HAVE FEWER ADS! And we can watch what we want whenever we want to.

What do we like about Netflix? For a fraction of the cost of cable, it gives you DVDs by mail plus the ability watch a lot of movies instantly, either on your computer or with their many compatible set-top boxes.

What do people like about Redbox. One buck! Pick it up and return it to the supermarket!

What do we like about cable?

Ummm, cable is a monopoly. You only get one store. You may only want a pair of socks and a shirt, but you are forced to buy a Yankee cap (even if you are a Mets or a Sox fan), cufflinks, perfume, towels, ladies underwear, two ties, a bedspread, low-slung hip-hop shorts, and a lamp. The kicker is that the price goes up all the time and the Calvin Klein shirt you actually came to buy costs extra. And of course LOTS AND LOTS OF ADS!

It's not that we don't like cable any more--we've always hated it!

But the key insight in the piece is how this, combined with Comcast's attempt to buy NBC Universal, show the backwards thinking of industry execs:

There's one tiny hitch though. Every single TV show and movie from NBC and Universal is available for free to anybody who has ten seconds to look for them. So what exactly is Comcast locking up? This isn't 1995, you know. Either you just shrug your shoulders about file-sharing or you start offering some alternatives that have benefits that people are willing to pay for like Hulu, Netflix, Redbox, and iTunes. Or maybe you work a little and come up with something new? Bill Maher said recently that the Republicans looked into the future and saw... radio. These entertainment giants are looking into the future and they see... cable.

Bingo. It's yet another case of execs looking to lock up content and block value, rather than providing additional value to users. It's people thinking about the way things used to work and trying to recreate it with a digital facelift, rather than looking to actually take advantage of what the new technology enables. That's only a snippet of Reid's analysis, so go read the whole thing.

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UK Man Jailed For Refusing To Decrypt His Files

from the right-against-self-incrimination dept

Two years ago, a US judge ruled that a guy with an encrypted hard drive did not have to hand over his encryption key to the police, as it would be a violation of the 5th Amendment (the right not to self-incriminate). The argument there is that the encryption key is a form of "speech." This is quite a reasonable ruling -- but it appears that over in the UK they view encryption keys quite differently. Last year, we wrote about a UK court ruling interpreting the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) to mean that people could be required to hand over encryption keys, since encryption keys were not "speech" but an object that could be demanded. Unfortunately, this has now resulted in a schizophrenic man being jailed for refusing to decrypt his files. As many are noting, this seems to be an abuse of law enforcement, as the purpose of the RIPA law was supposed to be about stopping organized crime and terrorism, not dumping the mentally ill in prison.

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Rather Than Blaming Twitter, NY Police Using It To Track Gang Activity

from the good-for-them dept

We've seen way too many stories of law enforcement officials blaming online tools like Craigslist, rather than using them proactively to help fight crime. Luckily, it appears that more and more folks in law enforcement are smart enough to know better. Robert Ring alerts us to a story about how gangs in New York are using Twitter to communicate and coordinate, but rather than blaming Twitter, the NYC Police Department is using it as a handy tool to find out what's going on:

Investigators are monitoring the traffic in hopes of sweeping up gangbangers before the bloodshed - and searching Twitter after attacks for clues.

"It is another tool ... just like old phone records," a police source said. "We can go through them [messages] to track these guys."

Nice to see these tools being used properly by law enforcement, rather than yet another public freakout over the wrong thing.

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Neat Trick: Rogers Offers Online Video And Broadband Cap To Punish You For Using It

from the that'll-work-well dept

Two separate initiatives by cable companies are coming together in conflict. We've seen how many cable companies are trying to set up video portals that will let subscribers to cable TV get access to the same content online, as a weak attempt to reduce churn of consumers dumping cable altogether and concentrating on online options. But, at the same time, they're also looking to implement broadband caps with high overage fees. Those two concepts are shown together with Rogers offering both a video portal and low metered caps with high overage fees. So your incentive is to not use the video portal (which apparently is limited in the first place). How is that going to reduce the churn? It seems like a far better option is to just go with another provider that actually focuses on adding value rather than limiting it. Too bad there's so little competition up in Canada. Ahhh... that explains things, now, doesn't it?

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Students Blocked From Publishing School Paper, Given 2 Hours To Write New Stories Or Fail

from the what-we-teach-our-kids dept

It's great what we teach our kids these days. Some students at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, put together their student paper, but the administration apparently freaked out because there were articles about drinking, smoking and teen pregnancy (you know, stuff that's actually relevant to students). So they blocked the publication of the paper and gave the students two hours to write new stories or receive failing grades (found via Poynter). Nice of them, right? The administration claims they just delayed the paper "to provide more time for editing and layout," though that's quite a different story than what the students are saying. We keep seeing stories like this, and at some point you have to wonder why more student publications don't just set up shop online, totally outside of the school district, and just publish what they want?

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US Visa Process Making It Even More Difficult For Foreign Musicians To Tour Here

from the that-can't-be-good dept

A couple of years ago, we noted that US Immigration was making life difficult for touring musicians by changing the way they enforced the visas commonly used by musicians. Specifically, the usual visa required proof of popularity -- but had no systems in place to account for popularity via the internet. This resulted in various well known musicians (including, by the way, our friend Lily Allen) being barred from making expected appearances in the US. It appears this sort of thing is happening again. The law still hasn't changed, but US Immigration has again increased the strictness in how it interprets the existing laws for foreign musicians, leading some top acts to be barred from entering the country -- or just increasing the bureaucracy they need to go through. For many foreign acts, touring the US is quite important in attracting more attention.

The article discusses how this is harming some acts that have built a lot of buzz or won awards... but then have had trouble capitalizing on that with a US tour. It's kind of amusing that just as we hear from politicians talking about the importance of helping musicians with more and more draconian copyright laws, they're making it that much more difficult for them to tour, build their reputation and earn a living. The next time an American politician discusses the need for more draconian copyright laws to help musicians, perhaps a reporter can ask them about this particular issue as well.

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Google Bug On Document Sharing Highlights Communication Problems

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

Hopefully this is just a big mistake, but Slashdot points us to a bunch of Google Docs users complaining that Google is blocking them from sharing their documents claiming "inappropriate content," even in cases where the content is clearly fine, such as college class notes and homework assignments. Even assuming this is just some sort of bug, the bigger issue seems to be Google's lack of response, despite the issue cropping up weeks ago. This charge has been raised about Google in the past, and it's only going to become more important. As more and more people rely on Google for services, the company is going to need to improve its handling of customer service issues and communication.

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School Tech Guy Fired For Running SETI@Home?

from the not-quite dept

SETI@Home, one of the earlier and (still) largest distributed computing projects was launched more than 10 years ago, and it's still pretty common for lots of folks (geeks and non-geeks alike) to run the screensavers and work through the mounds of SETI data. That's why it's a bit surprising to find a News.com writeup by Chris Matyszczyk, about a guy fired for running the software written up as if SETI@Home were some sort of wacky new project by UFO enthusiasts. Basically, it sounds like the guy installed the SETI@Home software on a bunch of computers at the school, and that upset school officials. This isn't the first time we've seen this sort of thing. Five years ago, we wrote about a similar firing of an employee by the state of Ohio.

Still, if you look at the details of this particular firing the situation seems a lot different than the News.com report suggests (or than even the article from AZCentral suggests). There's actually a criminal investigation going on, but the bigger issue (even though it's downplayed in the article) is the fact that the school district claims the guy stole 18 computers from the district and had them in his home (turned up by a warrant). That seems a lot more understandable as an offense leading to termination. Separately, it appears he did not complete his job duties -- such as installing firewall software that never showed up (oddly, the article never actually defines the guy's job title, but it sounds like some sort of IT job). The whole SETI@Home stuff just seems exaggerated. This includes the claim, made in the article, that the guy's actions cost the school district between $1.2 million and $1.6 million. While some of this may be tied to the missing computers, the article implies that much of it is from running SETI@Home, which the school claims was a burden on the computer systems. While he probably shouldn't have been running the software on those machines without permission, that alone is hardly that big of a deal. It seems like most people at the school district and the writers of the articles linked above don't understand how SETI@Home works, which seems to create an awful lot of confusion.

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Sprint Revealed GPS Data To Authorities 8 Million Times In The Last Year [Updated]

from the yowzers dept

This seems too insane to be true, but the EFF points us to a report, based on a Freedom of Information Act request, that claims Sprint provided law enforcement with GPS location data a staggering 8 million times in the last year. Sprint apparently set up some sort of portal that made such requests easier, and it sounds like law enforcement took advantage of that in a major way. The report also notes that this information should have been disclosed to Congress, under a 1999 law, but the Justice Department has ignored the law for the past five years. The rest of the report also looks at some other concerning factors, such as the fact that the government seems to regularly get all sorts of info from service providers, with little oversight. On top of that, it explains why so many service providers agree to it: they charge the government for such info, and it's quite lucrative. As such, they actually have the incentive to encourage the government to ask for more information and to deliver it to them as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, you have to wonder how so many requests are being made with such little oversight -- and how often this means the process is abused to spy on individuals with no legal basis. Update: Sprint is now trying to explain this by saying that the numbers represent number of "pings" and that can include thousands of pings per a single investigation. In a single investigation, once law enforcement has a court order, it can check someone's location every 3 minutes for up to 60 days -- and that's what made the number so inflated.

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How Georgia Wonder Turned Lack Of Cash To Record Into An Opportunity

from the marketing-smart dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about the UK music act Georgia Wonder, who was thrilled to be listed as one of the "most pirated" musical acts out there -- recognizing the power of good promotion. Since then, we've watched with interest how the group has continued to really interact with fans and use new tools and new marketing ideas to get heard and build a following. Rose M. Welch alerts us to the band's latest smart move. As they wanted to record a new album, they realized (as plenty of others have) that it's expensive to record an album -- buying studio time, equipment and instruments. So they did something different. They teamed up with a local music equipment shop, called Nevada Music and worked out a deal:

Both during store hours and after the store closes each night, they'll be recording their next album dubbed "Made In Nevada" using all the gear the store has on sale.

This benefits everyone. The band gets access to all the equipment and instruments they need, plus they get added attention for doing something cool and new. The store also gets a nice benefit in additional attention and marketing for itself and its products. What's cool about this is that it's yet another different way of going about things. One of the most frustrating responses we hear whenever we show examples of cool things that musicians are doing -- is people saying "but everyone can't do this." But that's the whole point. Musicians can keep coming up with cool different things to do. Frankly, the idea that they can't come up with cool ideas is insulting. These are some of the most creative people around, and given the ability to express that creativity, it's amazing what they come up with.

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That Mythical 'Information Wants To Be Free' Crowd

from the help-us-out-here dept

Jay Rosen is doing a brilliant job highlighting the rather silly trend among folks who think they're "debunking" the economics of free to build up complete strawmen often identified as "the information wants to be free crowd." However, as Rosen notes, none of those critics ever links to anyone in particular or defines who they're arguing against or what it is they actually said. There's a good reason for that, of course. Usually those folks are arguing against a myth. They don't want to argue against the actual economics or what folks who understand where free fits into the wider economic landscape are actually saying. They want to throw up a punching bag (usually something along the lines of "everything must be free!") which they can knock down without anyone punching back. But that's not because they're right, but because they're arguing against a myth. No one claims everything (even information) must be free. Most (and in this group I include folks like Kevin Kelly, Chris Anderson, Stewart Brand and others) are simply pointing to the basic economic forces on information. If you don't understand what those forces are, then you will be overwhelmed by them. But simply claiming that any one in that group is saying that everything must be free is flat out wrong.

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Rupert Murdoch: Feds Should Stay Out Of News Business, Except, Of Course To Smack Down Google For Sending Me Traffic

from the really? dept

Rupert Murdoch stopped by at an FTC workshop on the future of journalism to say that the federal government should "stay out" of regulating the journalism business. Except, in the same speech he said exactly the opposite. What he meant was that he didn't want the government to get in the business of funding journalism. Yet, in the very same speech he did say that the government shouldn't allow Google to link to his news stories, calling it "theft" yet again. Again, he didn't explain why he hasn't blocked Google if it's actually "theft." Not surprisingly, compounding these contradictions, he failed to mention (or perhaps recognize?) that the sites he owns do plenty of aggregating themselves. I've been told, however, that Arianna Huffington is making that point, though I wonder if Rupert stuck around to hear it. Update: Huffington has published her speech, which does a very nice job making the point.

Other points made by Murdoch include the bizarre claim that "advertising is dead" as a model to support journalism. You would think that someone who has lived through a bunch of ad market cycles wouldn't extrapolate from just a short period, but that appears to be what Murdoch is doing. About the only other explanation for all of this is that he's simply trying to confuse and throw off both the competition and the federal government -- but at some point someone should directly call him on his various contradictions and confusion.

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If You Gain Unauthorized Access To A Character In A Virtual World, Is It Theft?

from the confusion-abounds dept

Well, here we go again. For years we've questioned the wisdom of using real world laws to deal with issues within virtual worlds. You begin to open up quite the Pandora's Box of problems. If it's okay to charge someone for theft of virtual goods in a virtual world, what do you do if "theft" is a part of the game? And then does killing another character in a virtual world become "murder"? These issues are coming up again as Slashdot points out that a guy in the UK has been arrested for "robbery" of a player in the online world RuneScape. In this case, the arrested guy used a phishing scheme to get access to the username and password, making it similar to a story from two years ago involving "stolen goods" in Habbo Hotel that involved a similar "hacking" of an account.

But, again, it seems questionable to call this a robbery. Why not just charge the guy with violation of whatever laws there are against phishing or fraud, rather than robbery. These sorts of "robberies" can and probably should be dealt with directly in the virtual worlds themselves, where game administrators should be able to just "make things whole." Instead of calling it a robbery, why not focus on the actual crime of phishing, rather than the questionable "crime" of "robbery" of another's character.

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Shooting Victim Sues Google Over Search Results On His Name

from the good-luck-with-that dept

sinsi alerts us to a bizarre lawsuit in Australia where shooting victim Michael Trkulja is suing Google, claiming the search engine has some liability for his getting shot. The reasoning? Apparently searches on his name would take you to pages suggesting that Trkulja was involved in organized crime operations. It doesn't appear that he has any other info linking his shooting to this particular webpage or to the fact that the shooter may have done a Google search. It also does not appear (at least from the article here) that the guy is blaming the website in question -- just Google for leading people to it. Not sure what sorts of laws there are in Australia concerning such liability, but it's hard to think of a scenario under which this lawsuit should make sense under any legal system.

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