Month: October 2017

A Single Picture Illustrates How Google Turned American Library Association Into Shilling Machine

Everyone in this photo is directly or indirectly funded by Google. From left: ALA President Jim Neal; Re:Create Executive Director Joshua Lamel; Prue Adler, associate executive director, Federal Relations and Information Policy; Matt Schruers, vice president for law and policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association; Jonathan Band; Katherine Oyama, senior policy counsel for Google; and Carrie Russell, director of the Program on Public Access to Information at ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy. (Photo hot linked from American Library Magazine). 

The American Library Association has honored Jonathan Band for his “service” to libraries.  Complete and utter Google sponsored propaganda. They didn’t even bother to hide it.

And  If you mean by “service to libraries” coming up with the most far fetched rationale for librarians to weigh in against artists and on the side of enterprise scale mass piracy operations going all the way back to Grokster? Then yes, service to libraries.   Most recently they submitted an amicus in Cox v BMG case.   They didn’t even have a dog in the fight.  The logic of the brief (written by Band) is so tortured and convoluted I think he wrote it on acid. Just joking.  Clearly it is difficult to make points that Google wants to make  in a brief that is technically submitted by librarians.   It’s not his fault. Although that would have been  great if he actually wrote it while on acid.

But copyright and DMCA is not the only time that Band led librarians into darkness.   Google’s continuing obsession with pornography, sex trafficking and minors as some kind of “internet freedom” is consistently echoed by the librarians.  SESTA sponsors Senators Portman and Blumenthal should pay attention here.  The ALA has encouraged members to not install filters that would prevent minors from accessing hardcore pornography on public computers. As CBN reported in February:

“The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom told CBN News “we follow the law about providing internet access to minors, which varies from state to state,” but also explained that it opposes the indiscriminate “filtering” of sexual content.  “Librarians encourage parents and children to talk with one another.  Families have a right to set their own boundaries and values.  They do not have the right to impose them on others,” the office said.”

 

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8 year olds dude.

Think about this for a moment. If some fucked up parent or guardian thinks it’s okay for 8 year olds to look at XXX sites in libraries, libraries will permit that? I wonder what Child Protective Services has to say about that.  We can’t wait for Band to drag libraries into the SESTA debate.  Every one knows about this report right?

http://googletransparencyproject.org/articles/google-funds-dozens-groups-fighting-sex-trafficking-bill

 

by Dr. David C Lowery

Holding the Line on Tradeoffs for Statutory Damages

An extremely important blog to read on issues facing artists and rights holders. These are largely all man made problems (if by man you mean a small handful of tech company lawyers). Digital services create a problem.  Blame it on rights holders  and then the “solution” always seem to require sacrifices for artists. Castle doesn’t say this, but how can the reader not conclude that this is an orchestrated strategy. Take for instance the pre-1972 sound recording issue. The digital services paid royalties on the pre-1972. Then one day they stopped. All at once. As Pee Wee Herman might say “mmmm collusiony.” Then when a solution is proposed it always ends up with artists and rights holders being asked to make concessions on a problem digital services have created.

I’m not a lawyer but the whole fucking thing looks like a racket. By this I mean the trade organizations themselves, DiMA and the MIC-Coalition are behaving like a cartel or conspiracy that encourages law breaking (mass copyright infringement) that results in strong arming artists into lower prices. While these fucks thinks its some kind of game this literally takes food from the mouths of performers and songwriters children.

But here is the really fucked up  thing, if one looks just below the surface there seems to be a single lawyer that pops up over and over again. Nearly every time this racket is executed we find Chris Harrison. DMX, Sirius, Pandora and now DiMA.

What the fuck  did we ever do to you Mr Harrison? Can’t you find something better to do with your life?

So songwriters, performers, engineers and producers the next time you fall a little short and can’t pay that medical bill for your kids. Think about this guy. He’s at the center of the whole racket time and time again.

Read more on Chris Harrison here. 

Read Chris Castle’s excellent Music Tech Policy summary of all the problems tech created for songwriters and performers and how these have been used as leverage against us.

Music Technology Policy

It is very likely that we will hear about a move to make significant amendments to the Copyright Act at some point before the beginning of campaign season in 2018.  There are a high number of copyright-related bills that have been introduced in the House of Representatives in the current session, so brace yourself for an “omnibus” copyright bill that would try to cobble them all together Frankenstein-style.

A Frankenstein omnibus bill would be a very bad idea in my view and will inevitably lead to horse trading of fake issues against a false deadline.  Omnibus bills are a bad idea for songwriters and artists, particularly independent songwriters and artists, because omnibus bills tend to bring together Corporate America in attack formation.

MIC Coaltion The MIC Coalition

When you consider that Google and Facebook are part of Corporate America (not to mention Apple), the odds of the independent songwriter and artist, but…

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by Dr. David C Lowery