Copyright // Current TV

U.S. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Committee To Hold Hearings on Motown Recording Artists Copyright and Royalty Abuses

Music icon George Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic has previously taken the lead on... more

Beverly_Tran
added this
14 days ago
|
0 comments

100% Honesty, Transparency, Disclosure - is this the "naked future" that we want?

how radical transparency would change society, especially interpersonal relations.... more

googygood
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Too Much Copyright

"This disconnect between the public's view of copyright and fair use and what should and should not be prosecuted, versus the 'copyright maximist' view of the law, is our generation's Prohibition," says Ben Huh, CEO and founder of Cheezburger and a loud voice in the recent backlash to SOPA and PIPA, two congressional bills aimed at curbing internet piracy.

Copyright exists to "promote the useful arts" according to the Constitution. But is it still doing that? And should the government protect so-called "intellectual property" in the same way it protects other forms of property? Reason.tv posed these questions to Ben Huh, as well as a professor and a movie studio representative.

Tom Bell, a law professor specializing in property law, has serious reservations about attempts by groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to equate property and copyright through ad campaigns admonishing viewers with messages like, "You wouldn't steal a car. Downloading pirated movies is stealing."

"As soon as we start using [the word] 'copyright' for 'property,' we start taking less seriously our property rights for things like cars and houses," says Bell. "When you steal a candy bar or a car, you've left somebody without something to eat or something to drive."

But the MPAA's head content protection counsel, Ben Sheffner, thinks that piracy is a major problem that needs to be stopped.

"If this kind of piracy is allowed to run rampant, it'll deprive the public of the next great film," says Sheffner.

So, if the purpose of copyright is to incentivize the creation of artistic works, is it still doing its job? The data points to today's copyright regime doing little more than enriching the corporations with the strongest lobbyists.

"Is there a market failure in the production and dissemination of expressive works?" asks Bell. "I don't there's any risk that we're going to run out of songs, or books, or movies, or software any time soon."

While the MPAA and other entertainment industry trade groups have bemoaned the effects of rampant internet piracy on creative output, the numbers tell a different story. Research shows more music and books produced than ever before between 2005 to 2010, production of feature films growing by a factor of more than 4 in 14 years, and the number of video game companies exploding by a factor of 18 in the span of three years.

Still, the MPAA stands behind Chairman Chris Dodd's statement, made in the heat of the SOPA battle, that the U.S. could look to China's site-blocking laws as a positive example of anti-piracy regulation.

"If site blocking broke the internet, the internet would've been broken a long time ago," says Sheffner. "There's ways to implement these narrowly tailored remedies that really cut off these 'worst of the worst' web sites."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFMl0stqai0&feature=player_detailpage"This disconnect between the public's view of copyright and fair use and... more

letsliveinpeace
added this
1 month ago
|
1 comment

InJustice for All...Summary MisJudgment Exclusive Sneak Peek

If 96% of all networks and studios in NY and CA NEVER HAVE TO FACE A JURY in copyright... more

jakeoo13
added this
1 month ago
|
0 comments

Intellectual Property Alliance Wants File-Sharing Sites Shut Down Worldwide

The raid that ravaged Megaupload was just the start. A powerful trade group that lists... more

maasanova
added this
3 months ago
|
3 comments

Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web – And Might Win !?

Next post Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web – And Might Win... more

figgdimension
added this
4 months ago
|
15 comments

Super Bowl bust: U.S. government seizes 307 domains for violating NFL copyrights

While many sports fans are preparing for Sunday’s Super Bowl by organizing... more

Dagum
added this
4 months ago
|
0 comments

Seized by Homeland Security Investigations

Dig the colors. Big Brother is closing down sites to flex his muscles.

Progresshiv
added this
4 months ago
|
21 comments

Wakeupandopenyoureyes

FTF Fims - Wake Up - Open UR Eyez from FeedTheFire Films on Vimeo.

sunny1
added this
4 months ago
|
2 comments

Yes, The War for the Internet Has Begun

By now, people who use the Internet seriously, and even plenty who don’t, are aware of the arrest of six-foot-seven, 300-pound Kim Dotcom, an outsize figure in the business of facilitating Internet downloads.

The problem with his company, Megauploads, according to the US Justice Department and the FBI that carried out the arrest, is that his brainchild allowed users to traffic in "stolen" – copyrighted – entertainment on which no royalties had been paid.

In this article, I’ll comment on the arrest of Kim Dotcom and try to show how this one action is actually the beginning of an entirely new phase of what we may call the Internet Wars.

I’m not the first to notice this. As Kurt Nimmo and Alex Jones, of Infowars fame, pointed out in an article posted today entitled "The Great Internet Wars Have Begun," we wake up to an entirely new Internet era this weekend.

Yes, a war has been joined and human history shall never be the same. For one thing, the outcome is NOT certain – and the power elite that seeks to control and constrain the Internet may yet end up taking a step back – at least in these early rounds, anyway.

For another, the directed history that the Anglosphere power elite has been so clever at inculcating over the past century is gradually fading away. That’s perhaps an even more important point. The Dotcom arrest actually reinforces this observation, as I’ll try to show in a moment.

There is no doubt, in my view, that the elites practiced directed history in the 20th century, setting up wars and economic catastrophes designed to consolidate world government. But in the 21st century, with so many understanding and evaluating the mechanisms of the elites, this is a considerably harder trick to pull off.

The elites actually have a limited playbook when it comes to influencing the larger society, though that is not intended to downplay its power. The elites use what we call dominant social themes – fear-based promotions – that are designed to frighten middle classes into giving up wealth and power to specially prepared globalist institutions like the UN, IMF, etc....

...Just yesterday, in an article entitled "Internet Piracy – Who Are the Thieves?," we pointed out that copyright laws were developed by royalty hundreds of years ago to counteract the spread of information (in books) after the invention of the Gutenberg Press.

The same tactics that applied then are being applied now. War, authoritarian legislation and copyright infringement are all tools of this particular elite that we have been saddled with....

Continued at:

http://thedailybell.com/3529/The-War-for-the-Internet-Has-BegunBy now, people who use the Internet seriously, and even plenty who don’t, are... more

Dagum
added this
4 months ago
|
11 comments

Amazon Kindle: Digital Book Burning

Amazon’s Kindle is appropriately named, as to kindle means to "catch fire" or to "cause to start burning" (Wordnet 3.0, n.d.). The newest generation of Kindle products support the downloading of books without even having a computer connection, allowing the consumer to get a new book "anytime, anywhere" (Amazon.com: Kindle, 2009). At first glance, this type of technology seems to offer the consumer amazing freedom, flexibility, and opportunity. Coupled with this convenience, however, is the ability of Amazon to control what one reads, censor materials, violate a user’s privacy, and even attempt to circumvent their own Terms of Service and renege on the customer’s "non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use" (Amazon Kindle: License Agreement and Terms of Use, 2009).

In June and July of 2009, Amazon. com removed a few titles (including Rand’s The Fountainhead, and Orwell’s 1984) from their Kindle Store, citing a seemingly noble cause of attempting to protect the intellectual property of the publishers (Manjoo, 2009). Though this action may be a disappointment to consumers wishing to purchase the respective eBooks, the removal of these titles is not, in itself, unethical, illegal, or cause for any type of alarm. However, Amazon.com took their supposed pursuit of nobility a step further and wirelessly connected to their customers’ Kindle devices and removed their already-purchased copies of said titles. Not only did this action break their Terms of Service mentioned above, but it also brought digital censorship to a daunting new level.

This is an interesting conversation on the topic of software and hardware limitations, spy software and the crappy world of proprietary software.

Before digital copies of books, physical copies could be sold without any method of recovery. To clarify, when one purchases a book from a store (assuming cash is used instead of a cheque or credit card), there is no method for the vendor to attain information about that individual’s identity, including his or her whereabouts. This means that if the book is recalled, banned by a government, or goes out of print the publishers, vendors, and law enforcement authorities have no hope in retrieving previously-sold copies of the book without the individual’s consent...

Continued at:
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=18285Amazon’s Kindle is appropriately named, as to kindle means to "catch... more

Dagum
added this
4 months ago
|
3 comments

The Invisible Hum

Piracy used to concern me deeply. Over a decade ago, I discovered than an ex-business... more

joeeddy
added this
4 months ago
|
0 comments

Anonymous - Sony's homepage to be plastered with pirated music in protest of SOPA.

Coordinated teams of hacktivists will wage war on Sony on Monday to punish the company... more

worrg
added this
4 months ago
|
0 comments

Rewritten Headlines: Small Frogs to NFL Draft

News rewritten the way it should be.

TonyDiGerolamo
added this
5 months ago
|
0 comments

AP’s content licensing venture NewsRight – another Righthaven threat in the wings?

The latest iteration of publishers trying to ensure that its content is being paid for — which is obviously well within their rights when they actually own the copyright — is NewsRight, launched by the Associated Press. TechDirt had this to say about the venture:

It doesn’t sound like they’ll totally pull a Righthaven, where their first move is to sue, but rather (from the various vague descriptions) it sounds like NewsRight will be going around simply trying to get blogs and aggregators to buy a license. But here’s the thing: on what legal basis? That’s the part that’s not clear. Much of what blogs and newspapers do is simply not infringing (even if the AP likes to pretend it is). There may be some extreme cases where there is infringement, but most standard cases seem like classic fair use. And that’s where it gets worrisome that this turns into a legal shakedown — whereby sites are pressured to pay up just to avoid a legal fight, no matter how strong the legal position of these sites might be.

But, much more to the point, nothing in this plan appears to be about adding value. That’s the key way to determine if a business model is heading in the right direction, or if it’s really just someone trying to “free ride” on the work of someone else. NewsRight appears to be the worst kind of free rider, honestly. They’re not adding any value — they’re just demanding people pay up to avoid a negative cost (the legal threat). Also telling? The company admits that half the staff is… lawyers, and that appears to include the company’s CEO.

The licensing fees aren’t public yet; the question is – who will be able to afford NewsRight’s license if the model is aggressive? From the publisher’s standpoint, NewsRight says it is “accepting new applications for news organizations and bloggers who want to syndicate their content.”
BusinessWeek explains the dilemma facing the AP with its Righthaven-lite NewsRight:

The fundamental problem the AP faces is the same as that faced by virtually every traditional news entity as a result of the “democratization of distribution”—namely, how can it control the flow of content as it used to? The short answer is it can’t, which has disrupted the way the AP functions in more ways than one. Twitter and other tools have taken on many of the aspects of a real-time newswire. The AP faces other competitors as well, including such upstarts asNewsCred, which has built a content-licensing system, and even Google itself.

News entities such as the Guardian have tried to take advantage of the new ecosystem of news by turning themselves into open platforms—but others like the AP seem determined to reinvent the monopolies they used to have before the Web existed. For NewsRight, the big test will come when it offers onerous licensing terms to an aggregator: What happens when an organization such as The Huffington Post says “no, thank you?” That’s when it will become obvious how much of NewsRight’s business model is based on carrots—and how much of it is about waving a big stick.
http://tinyurl.com/6ozt3lvThe latest iteration of publishers trying to ensure that its content is being paid for... more