Monthly Archives: September 2012

Weekly Recap & Links Sunday Sep 30, 2012

Grab the Coffee!

Trichordist Recently Posted:
* Why are Internet Freedom Fighters always fighting against the Internet Freedom of Artists?
* Is The New Internet Association Really Just A Pro-Corporate Version Of The Pirate Party? No It’s a Transparent Ploy by Google To Curry Favor With Congressional Republicans.
* Artists Utilize Power of Internet to Get Paid …
* Ad Sponsored Piracy Gains Attention and Awareness in Europe
* Is it The Pirate Party, or The Pirate Lobby?
* Mythbusters, Why Internet Pirates Will Not Win (and should just get over it)
* Class Act: Amanda Palmer.
* Pandora, Please Stop discrimination against Musicians!
* So much for Post-Scarcity, unless Electricity is free?
* Google Pro-Artist Policy Changes Challenge Allegations of “Net Censorship”

From Around the Web:

FastCompany:
* Samsung Muscles In On New Territory – Providing Digital Content

VoxIndie via NPR:
* via NPR-How Much do Artists Make on Youtube?
* YouTube Shares Ad Revenue With Musicians, But Does It Add Up?

CopyHype:
* Friday’s Endnotes 09/28/12

Digital Music News:
* Spotify Is Almost Profitable in Europe?
* Deadmou5 witholding latest album from Spotify
* Gee, That’s Funny: Grooveshark Has the Entire deadmau5 Album…

Torrent Freak:
* Canadian Government Learns about the rogue nature of Ad Networks
* Six Strikes Cooperative ISP/Content Initiative coming soon?
* More pirate convictions, this time Jail and 1.1m Euros Fine

Ethical Fan:
* Comcast May Owe Content Owners $1.6B A Year Or More

Music-Tech-Policy:
* Not So Stoopid After All: Firedoglake Reports that Google Pulls Utoopi App
* Updated: A New Twist on Artist Consent Provisions: Protect Your Right to Say No to @mcdonalds ads on pirate sites
* The Wall of Shame Diaspora Jumps the Pond: UK Authors Speak Out on Brand-Supported Piracy

Copyright Alliance:
* Internet Freedom and Protection of Authorship: A Winning Ticket

Why are Internet Freedom Fighters always fighting against the Internet Freedom of Artists?

We’re always a little amazed when site like Hypebot takes up the fight for internet freedom, as long as that freedom does not include artists rights. Recently the site has confused the difference between a $20 settlement for illegal downloading, versus a $9,250 per song judgement for copyright infringement.

It seems to us, that getting off the hook for $20 per song is a pretty good deal. Should a person downloading also be found to be uploading and distributing (you know, infringing copyright) than they might want to think twice before pushing back too hard or they could end up like Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas. Both of whom were found guilty of copyright infringement by a Jury of their peers and awarded damages upheld by the courts.

It’s troubling when sites that state they are trying to help musicians are actually making arguments to support the people who exploit artists and rip them off, but not the artists themselves.

Is The New Internet Association Really Just A Pro-Corporate Version Of The Pirate Party? No It’s a Transparent Ploy by Google To Curry Favor With Congressional Republicans.

I’m just reading through some related documents for the “new” Internet Association.  It has really struck me that it is very similar to the Pirate Party. Except  it’s views are even more extreme than the Pirate Party.

Here is an example. PP Germany only supports non-commercial filesharing.  But in the Internet Association’s view there should be no enforcement action on any copyright infringement including commercial exploitation. In fact they are gonna defend those breaking the law!  The reason? Apparently enforcing property rights will break the internet. Cause remember the Internet did actually break after Kim Dotcom was locked up. Didn’t it? Sorry I wasn’t paying attention.

From this we can only assume that the Internet Association will soon be rushing down to Florida to defend  Hotfile from the Internet Breaking Forces of Copyright.  I mean there are already lawyers who work Google’s interests in other cases down there defending Hotfile.  And the other big tech  funded astroturf group Public Knowledge is already sending Prof James Boyle to defend the  arms dealers-oops I mean  cyberlocker businessmen  from this terrible threat to free speech and/or the arming of child soldiers.  You remember Public Knowledge from the Google Shill List, right?

Seriously, this press release is one of the funniest things I’ve read since I read the FSF’s hospitality rider for Richard Stallman.  These serial violators of online privacy are now going to be defending our privacy online?!!  I almost wet myself again typing that last sentence.

These sort of shenanigans are making me like the Pirate Party. Yes you heard that right.  At least the Pirate Party are only deluded idealists. Like 70′s revolutionary  maoist college professors in berets with pictures of Che Guevara dreaming of a perfect classless society.    There is some collectivist idealism underlying their hope that freely sharing (aka redistributing) all cultural goods will lead to some imagined utopia. They are totally wrong but  they are at least  (mostly) sincere  in their beliefs.  And as far as I know not many of them are getting rich advocating pirate policies.

However the Internet Association is nothing like that.  On one hand it’s nothing remarkable : craven opportunists and political operatives  cashing in on some recent political clusterjam™ (SOPA).  But on the other hand it’s a remarkably brazen maneuver  even by Washington standards. As Jane Hamsher carefully explains at Firedoglake.com , this is simply a  ham-fisted and amazingly transparent attempt  by tech industry-especially Google- to curry favor with Congressional Republicans, and in particular Rep. Upton.

Basically Google, Amazon et al already have Net Coalition, EFF, Public Knowledge, Tech Freedom, Fight For The Future,  Internet Defense League, Pirate Freedom, Tech Pirate Freedom, Pirate Knowledge, ex-KGB Freedom Pirates, Belarus Institute For Credit Card Fraud, Electronic Failed State Coalition, Moldovan SPCA, Russian Brides  Foundation and  Offshore Pharmacy Coalition  lobbying for their interests in Washington.   So why do they need yet another lobby shop in Washington?

Because they really really pissed off some powerful Republicans in the Anti-SOPA fight.  They now need to build a “Republican friendly” version of the same organizations they already fund.

To quote Walter in the  TV version of the Big Lebowski:

“Do you see what happens, Larry? Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the alps?”

This is what happens Larry:

You have to spend millions of dollars building yet another fake organization, this one fronted by a Republican. All this to  make Congressman Lamar Smith forget you put those  billboards in front of his office during the SOPA fight.  You really think that’s gonna work? Can I have some of what you are smoking?

I say if you  have this much money to spend on the vote of one Republican congressman you  don’t need any help from Washington! And speaking of The Big Lebowski ,  I would  love to see the Congressman get all Walter Sobchak on your ass.

Artists Utilize Power of Internet to Get Paid – Community Activism moves the needle for Artists Rights.

We’ve already posted how pleased we are that Amanda Palmer is a class act and did the right thing by recognizing her error in not wanting to pay her local pick-up musicians. The part of this story that really excites us however is that the creative community came together to effect positive change. No part of this story involved the RIAA or the MPAA. No part of this story involved an evil record label (unless you include Palmer as the Label). This story was very simply about artists expressing sadness and anger at the continued exploitation of their labor. The swift movement started with one letter, in a single blog post by Amy Vallincourt-Sals of Classical Revolution Portland.

The most important take away here is that many artists added their voices to this discussion for fair compensation, even if they were not directly effected. It’s time for more artists and creators to learn from this experience and support each other as a community. As we posted last week, many artists are being affected by an attempt from internet corporations to weasel out of paying royalties to artists on sites like Pandora.

Now artists are faced with the intentionally mistitled “Internet Radio Fairness Act” which is designed to be a transfer of wealth from artists to internet companies in a wall street style bail out attempt to prop up their failing business models on the backs of artists. We hope that all artists and creators see this as a community issue and not one that just effects musicians.

We’re excited to see the community of creators, artists, and musicians recognizing that we are all in this together, and when we work together we can create positive change as witnessed by Amanda Palmer rethinking her position this past week on paying her musicians.

Ad Sponsored Piracy Gains Attention and Awareness in Europe

Christian Wicky of Music Creators Switzerland is quoted in this story from the Swiss news outlet, 20 Minutes Online. As we’ve been reporting the advertising sponsored illegal exploitation of artists is rampant and appears to be an international problem gaining attention in Europe as well.