In yet another disastrous act of misguided desperation, Pandora announced that they purchased a radio station in Rapid City, South Dakota.  That’s not South San Francisco, it’s South Dakota–1500 miles away.

Why did they buy that station?  To somehow try to bootstrap themselves into the most important thing in their miserable lives–paying songwriters less.  (And artists will be next.)

Pandora has no connection to South Dakota, much less Rapid City–and that’s not why the FCC grants licenses to radio station owners.  But in the world of media concentration perfected by Pandora’s running buddies Clear Channel, buying a radio station in a city you have no connection to for purposes not related to proper use of the public airwaves to benefit the citizens of Rapid City is just business as usual.  Send in the Silicon Valley lawyers with the IPO checkbook to screw the songwriters whatever the cost.

Just…

Last night in London, Google’s head of EU policy Theo Bertram participated in a debate with David Lowery and some others.  You can read MuscAlly’s live blog about it here.

More about this later, but it’s important to note that Mr. Bertram speaking for Google came up with a brilliant idea for how to “white list” bad sites for advertisers:

Bertram said that it’s theoretically possible to have a dynamic list of the 500 top piracy sites, for use by brands when stipulating where their ads should appear – or for legal purposes.

“It’s not Google’s job to go around the web to declare whether sites are legal or illegal [false premise, no one asked them to do that], but if Coca-Cola comes to us and says here’s a list of 500 dynamic sites, and we don’t want you to place ads on those… that’s a slightly different…

We heard a new twist on the Copyright Principles Project–because the participants are academics, they are not “self interested” the way that creators are.  Ah, disinterested elites on a quest for truth that only the anointed can divine.

Although this point of view is common to academics (who frequently seem to think that their views are superior to everyone else’s–as any law student can attest), allow this non acolyte to diverge from the path to an “A” (or other form of approval, such as a nice fresh fish so appreciated by trained seals) and express a contrary view at the risk of getting an “F”.

First off, the Copyright Principles Project is not entirely made up of people who don’t know each other and is also not entirely made up of academics.  Some corporate types are represented–just not one soul from the photography business, playwrights, visual artists, or anyone from…

If I worked for a company like Google that got slammed by Members of Congress for promoting “sex club” apps on Android and YouTube, I’d be a bit careful about using the word “fetish” to describe anything, even metaphorically.

But Google spends hundreds of millions in legal fees annually to try to force creators into submission and induce a state of learned helplessness so using “fetish” to describe a business that Google wants to compete with shouldn’t surprise anyone.  Evidence?  Here’s a few recent examples, backing an appeal by the adjudicated thief Isohunt, receiving well over 19 million takedown notices a month for links to infringing sites that Google drives traffic to in their monopoly search engine, supporting brand sponsored piracy, trying to disallow the authors ability to sue as a class in the Google Books case so that authors would have to individually bring millions of…

“It’s really important that we protect the rights of really good looking people in this society,”

Attorney Andrew Bridges of Fenwick & West (frequently representing Google) quoted at Beautiful Person Derek Khanna’s SXSW Panel

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First They Send the Missionaries

If you read much about the expansion of the British Empire, you will begin to get the idea: First they send the missionaries.

This is the thought that went through my mind a few years ago when I was on a panel with Alex Curtis from Public Knowledge at the Leadership Music Digital Summit in Nashville.  (MTP readers will remember this is the panel at which we formed the rule–don’t participate in panels when your fellow panelists are using iPads on the stage.  They may be tweeting questions to a ringer in the audience who then asks questions that the Tweeting Panelist wants to answer.)

That summit was…

“It’s possible to make forgetting impossible, because we can all wear our Google Glasses that will store everything we see. Whereas if you actually thought deeply about the role of forgetting in enabling us to become who we are, perhaps you would actually find some redeeming features to that process.”
–Evgeny Morozov, quoted in the Globe and Mail

Riddle me this:  Would there have been a Street View without a Wi-Spy?  Or a Wi-Spy without a Street View?  If Google had sent cars around the world with just the Wi-Spy sniffers, would they have gotten away with it for as long as they did?  Which is the more valuable to Google long term?  Pictures of your house or the location of your wi-fi?  Which gives them more hyperaccurate (you know…innovative) maps?  Can they resell the pictures of your house to the National Security Agency, or would the government be more…

“It’s really important that we protect the rights of really good looking people in this society,”

Attorney Andrew Bridges of Fenwick & West quoted at Beautiful Person Derek Khanna’s SXSW “Fashion Week” Panel

In today’s News of the Beautiful, we find that the  founders of the very beautiful Pirate Bay–who are both beautiful and innovative–have discovered yet another law that must be reformed and “updated”.  Yes, we are of course speaking of the unspeakably out of date European Convention of Human Rights.  We, of course, commend the beauties to take their appeal to only the highest level of appeal for they are obviously Too Beautiful to be judged merely by their peers.  Yes, the Beautiful may only be judged by the European Court of Human Rights–but they unfortunately found that the reach of the running dogs of the MPAA penetrate even unto that august body.

The section…

In case you were wondering what ever happened to the so-called Internet Radio “Fairness Act”, here’s another little taste of what Big Tech has in store for artists–particularly “legacy” artists, meaning artists with strong catalog from the past.  Let’s say from before 1972.

What’s magic about 1972?  That was the year that the US Congress recognized a copyright in sound recordings (February 15, 1972 to be precise).  “Pre-72 masters” as the recordings are known were protected by state law before that.  So it is not that these older recordings are not protected–such as those by Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Bob Wills, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Buddy Holly, Glenn Miller or Robert Johnson–it’s just that they are not protected by federal law.

True to form, Big Tech and their pals at the National Association of Broadcasters are busily trying to screw artists on pre-72 masters out of public performance royalties on…