Entries Tagged 'the commons' ↓

I’m sure we’re in for appeals on this one, but in his interpretation of the DMCA, US District Court judge John Bates has ordered Verizon to turn over the name of a Kazaa subscriber who shared hundreds of recordings over the P2P service. Verizon has been refusing, claiming that the DMCA’s streamlined subpoena process only applies to hosts of content, not the transmitters of the content.

The judge says no. So… think of all those wires your e-mail and your web surfing and your uploads and downloads and IM messages are traveling through. Think of all those subpoenas.

In an article in Red Herring magazine, Lawrence Lessig describes the reactions of Japanese Manga publishers to the proliferation of Doujinshi.

Manga are comic books and graphic novels, extremely popular in Japan with both adults and children. Some of the more popular manga making their way here in the US include Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing and DragonBall Z, all of which have escaped from the pages of manga to find even greater success as anime — animated cartoons. Doujinshi are fan-created stories and series based on the characters in favorite manga. Ranging from photocopied ‘zines to slick publications, the doujinshi attract a loyal following of artists that, in many cases, dwarfs the official output of the characters’ creators.

In commenting on an article by Salil Mehra, which appeared in the Rutgers Law Review (abstract, full article), Lessig, probably the foremost commentator on law in the internet age, discusses the lack of enforcement action by copyright holders against the publishers of the doujinshi. His observation is that this inaction demonstrates the difference between businesses run by businessmen and businesses run by lawyers.

The law is by nature conservative, relying on precedent, and reluctant to create novelty. It is based on rules, absolutes, commandments and has little room for shades of gray. Business is the opposite: innovative, amorphous, flexible. To a lawyer, unlicensed use of a copyright is, in itself, wrong and should be stopped. A savvy businessperson, however, looks at the effects of that unlicensed use and tries to determine how that use may be of benefit. Fan fiction, fan ‘zines, fan websites all serve to keep the original in the forefront of the fans’ attention, providing the marketer with an audience always hungry for more. Blocking the supply only serves to allow other products to usurp the fans’ attentions.

Right now, Hollywood and the music industry are in the thrall of lawyers. Instead of looking for ways to use fan loyalty and fan obsession, they are grabbing, hoarding and locking down all of their products, alienating their audience, and encouraging them to look elsewhere for entertainment.

The situation reminds me of the greedy little kid who grabs the bats, balls, bases and mitts, saying, “Mine!”, then is left all alone with his equipment but no one to play with.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t one of the major reasons given for introducing and approving the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) was to synchronize US copyright laws with European copyright laws.

So then, why, as decribed in this New York Times article, are European copyrights expiring on music recordings made in 1953, when here in the US, those copyrights won’t expire until 2048?

The CTEA provides a term of 95 years for copyrights owned by a corporation. Almost all sound recordings are owned by record labels, rather than by the artists. However, under the 1976 Copyright Act, artists became eligible to terminate the transfer of copyright after 35 years. This new right took effect in 1978, so in 2013, most artists will be able to renegotiate the rights to their pre-1978 recordings. (The RIAA in 1999 tried to annul this right by sneaky lobbying to have the right terminated by some obscure language in an unrelated bill. The language was quickly removed after the Recording Artists Coalition formed in response to this outrage.)

The European copyright expirations mean that starting this year, some of the seminal recordings of early rock will be available from multiple sources. That is, of course, if the RIAA doesn’t get their Congresspeople-for-hire to block importation of CDs.

I’m happy to say goodbye to 2002, although I hold out no great hope for 2003.

2002 was a year of low-level anxiety about an uncertain economy, an uncertain war on and by any number of unspecified enemies, an un-debated attack on our liberties and freedoms. As the presidency became more imperial in nature, the judicial continued its encroachment on the legislative branch powers. The increasingly-consolidated media along with the “content” industries continued their crusade to property-ize all aspects of our common culture. The skies weren’t safe, the mailbox wasn’t safe, and if you lived or worked in the neighborhood of the national capital, neither were the gas stations, schools, shopping centers nor highways.

My parents, both of whom retired in 2001, found it necessary to return to work in 2002 after watching their retirement investments begin to shrink. And they were the lucky ones, since, as civil servants, they were among the few people left who actually have a guaranteed pension to which the investments are supplements.

My wife was fired from her job this year, we had to euthanize one of my favorite cats, co-workers were laid off, my roof leaked, my under-warranty cars misbehaved in ways not covered by warranties, my family became more scattered with my parents selling my childhood home and moving into two part-time houses — one in New York and one in Florida. My wife’s family continued their meaningless feuding which makes it so much more difficult to us to maintain neutrality.

About the only bright spots were my new twin niece and nephew, born to my brother and my sister-in-law, my new niece, born to one of Jenn’s brothers and his wife, my new nephew born to another of her brothers and his wife, and all those beautiful babies born to my close friends and co-workers.

No kids of my own, so I’ve gotta keep a little hope going for all of them.

It’s so nice of our Congress-critters to be concerned with the effects of foreign government-ordained censorship against the citizens of those countries. A new bill in Congress seeks everything up to and including a UN resolution condemning countries that censor the web. It advocates “technological means to circumvent censorship tools.”

This is from the same band of idiots who gave us the DMCA — which criminalizes using technological means to circumvent those devices which keep us from enjoying or studying legitimately-acquired media in the manner and place in which we choose.

This is from the same band of morons who gave us the CIPA & COPA & CHIPA & CDA and whatever other acronyms they use to describe the mandate for censorware in libraries and schools and public places where a child may possibly walk into or walk near or hear about the possibility of walking near…

This is from the same bunch of cretins who are looking to put a censor and a copyright cop in every piece of equipment capable of playing a digital file… including hearing aids and toilet seats.

I’m so glad they’re concerned about the rights of citizens in foreign countries… now if they could just turn their sights closer to home.

The list of silenced internet radio broadcasters is expanding. RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter has an updated list, which will probably keep growing unless Congress is persuaded to act, overriding the ridiculous CARP process and either instituting a percentage-of-revenues royalty rate, or determining that there is no difference in the promotional value of internet radio vis-a-vis broadcast radio. Visit SaveInternetRadio.org and let your Congress members know your views.

Slowly, but surely, internet radio broadcasters are shutting down. As I mentioned last week, the Librarian of Congress was due to announce his decision on performance rates for internet radio on June 20.

Well, sure enough, the announcement came. Wired — delusionally deciding that this is a good thing — announced “Webcasters Fees Slashed in Half”. And it’s true: they were slashed in half, from US.14¢ per song per listener to US.07¢ per song per listener. Which means that the 1,000 listener per hour station which has been broadcasting for the past 3 years will only owe a quarter-million US dollars in royalties, rather than a half-million! Wowee!

Stations are disappearing quietly. SomaFM‘s home page reads “Killed by the RIAA. June 20th, 2002″. NetRockRadio is silent, their home page declaring June 20th, 2002 as “The Day the Music Died.” MoreMusicRadio says, “It’s Sad to Say Goodbye.” Tag’s TranceTrip says, “Off the Air.” Perkigoth says, “Killed by CARP, Harassed to death by SESAC!” The Downbeat says, “One day RIAA will be seen for what they truely are…” Flaresound says, “Shutdown because of RIAA on June 22nd, 2002.” There will be many more.

RIAA says its not their responsibility to “subsidize the webcasting businesses of multi-billion dollar companies like Yahoo, AOL, RealNetworks and Viacom.” (Strangely enough, AOL & Viacom are major members of the RIAA, with AOL/Time Warner providing nearly 20% of their yearly budget, according to the folks at MonkeyRadio — another silent station, whose founder happens to be the developer of WinAmp, now owned by AOL.) Strange, how they consider that allowing internet radio stations to expose their music to potential buyers is a subsidy, when this is exactly the same thing they provide to terrestrial and satellite radio. In fact, they illegally pay the broadcasters to play their records over the public airwaves which we license to the broadcasters for much less than their true value. (Check out the pitifully small FCC license fees paid by even the largest radio stations: WCBS-AM in New York, reaching 14.5 million potential listeners paid just US$4,550 for its broadcast license last year!)

With a bit of “too-little-too-late”, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who sold his Broadcast.com to Yahoo for US$5B, told RAIN that the deal his company was negotiating with the RIAA was was “designed so that there would be less competition, and so that small webcasters who needed to live off of a ‘percentage-of-revenue’ to survive, couldn’t.” This was the deal which the Copyright panel used as the basis for its determination, since it was the only deal out there! And then, just to rub a little salt in the wound, Yahoo announced today that it was going to close some of its streaming audio sites. Although they claim that the CARP ruling had nothing to do with it, RAIN reports that the negotiated deal with the RIAA expired at the end of 2001.

So what’s the future? Well, Canada is proposing legislation similar in effect to the CARP royalty structure: C$0.25 per month per listener, payable to SOCAN, the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA. RantRadio is spearheading the fight to keep alive diversity in internet radio in our northern neighbor. I’m not sure what’s happening in Europe right now — the situation there may be a little different, since radio stations are mainly state-owned and therefore not as fearful of internet upstarts as their brothers in the US.

The most important thing you can do is write your Congress-people. There’s a form letter which you can have faxed to you Senators & Representatives, as well as other actions you can take, listed at SaveInternetRadio.org.

This is an interesting article about the DJs who are (not) playing music on the Clear Channel stations I mentioned in my previous entry. Turns out those guys and gals talking about the things and people in the community they serve may not be anywhere near that community.

And you know the local KISS-FM station — it’s just one of 47 KISS-FM stations owned by Clear Channel.

Welcome to radio as Velveeta – pasteurized and processed.

Webcasting Rate Information Due From Copyright Office/Library of Congress at 5pm Thursday.

This is the Copyright Office’s response to its rejection of the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel’s (CARP’s) recommendation that internet radio stations should pay a royalty of .14¢ (14/100ths of a cent) per listener, per hour of broadcasting, retroactive to 1998. As Save Internet Radio calculates:

a mid-sized independent webcaster (imagine two or three people working out of a home office or a campus apartment) that has had, say, an average audience of 1,000 listeners for the past three years, the bill for retroactive royalties — which will come due 45 days after the royalty rate is approved — would be $525,600!

And it’s all based on this ridiculous theory that internet radio should pay to use music, but broadcast radio doesn’t need to. The theory is that broadcast radio serves to promote the music while internet radio competes with record sales. I think Hillary Rosen of the RIAA must’ve been smoking crack when she came up with that one.

When I listen to the radio lately, all I hear is the approved 8 songs for this week from Clear Channel Communications or Infinity Broadcasting. If the record companies were only releasing 8 songs between them then — sure, broadcast would be promoting those 8 songs. But internet radio promotes the thousands of smaller bands, indie bands, unsigned bands, regional bands which the no-taste tastemakers haven’t got a clue about.

Besides that, are the broadcast radio stations actually promoting anything but themselves and their local and national advertisers? Although there doesn’t seem to be any definitive study of advertising minutes per hour on radio, the sources I’ve found seem to estimate that music stations are playing 16-22 minutes of advertising, news, weather, etc. per hour of broadcast. So, given that limited music-hole, how can it be claimed that they are a promotional medium?

Basically, today’s announcement will determine the future of internet radio. Either they’ll be taxed out of business, or we’ll get to hear lots of bitching and moaning from Hillary Rosen and the corporate gluttons at the RIAA, claiming how this will really hurt the artists. Like they’d know an artist if they heard one…