What Does Hotfile’s Closure Mean to You? | Plagiarism Today

With the closure of Hotfile, questions are raised about what this means for content creators and the cyberlocker industry. Here are a few likely outcomes.

The judge in the case also ordered Hotfile that, if it wishes to remain open, it has to use “digital fingerprinting” to filter out infringing works. However, Hotfile, either unable or unwilling to comply with that request, has decided to shut down its site, effective immediately.

Hotfile’s closure is easily the biggest case of a cyberlocker being forced offline through legal action since Megaupload in January 2012. However, with nearly two years passed since Megaupload’s shuttering, the Web, especially for illegal downloads, is already a very different place.

READ THE FULL STORY AT PLAGIARISM TODAY:
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/12/04/hotfiles-closure-mean/

by Trichordist Editor

Beasties Countersue GoldieBlox–GoldieBlox brings in Google Books Lawyer

Sometimes life does imitate art.  The Beastie Boys have countersued Silicon Valley darling GoldieBlox in a very well written complaint focusing as much on right of publicity and false endorsement as copyright infringement (“Beastie Boys Sue GoldieBlox For Acting With “Oppression, Fraud, And Malice“).

In case you missed it, the wonderful new music blog MusicIntelligentsia has a series of posts about the connections between the rather unbelievable recent Google Books ruling on fair use and the lawsuit that GoldieBlox filed against the Beastie Boys and Rick Rubin.  One post in particular connects the lawyer for Google in the Google Books case to the artist-busting tactics Google employed to attack all the world’s authors, illustrators, songwriters, screenwriters and photographers (“Organizing the World’s Information Whether the World Likes It Or Not: Fair use for the 1% After Google Books“).   That lawyer, Daralyn Durie of one of Google’s principle outside law firms, led the attack on Google’s move to destroy the artist class in the Books class action and force all authors to sue individually on a book by book basis (“Google wants authors group out of [Google Books] case“).  Ms. Durie told the Court (apparently with a straight face):

Google attorney Daralyn Durie told Judge Denny Chin in federal court in Manhattan that authors and photographers would be better off fending for themselves because their circumstances varied widely, especially since the copyright issue for authors involves the display of small snippets of text.

Strangely enough, the New York Times reports that right on cue, Ms. Durie is now representing GoldieBlox.  GoldieBlox is/was/maybe still is also represented by Orrick, the old line San Francisco behemoth and one of the worlds largest law firms.  Perhaps Orrick lacked Ms. Durie’s special talents.

Look, over there–there are some artists left who Silicon Valley hasn’t jacked around!  Call the experts!

Gee, that sure is some high powered (and highly paid) legal advice for a little Silicon Valley startup.  Looks to be running about $3,000 an hour.  Or, said another way, about 3 Google shares per hour.

Welcome to life in the 1% of the 1%.

by thetrichordist

GOOD WORKS : Artists help homeless on ‘Compassion Through Action’ | American Live Wire

Artists understand giving for a good cause. Here’s one example for this Holiday Season.

Artists have united to help the homeless with a new digital-only charity compilation album titled Compassion Through Action.  Released this week on Bandcamp.com, the ten-track collection is the first of a two-volume set.  The project is essentially a group of select songs “curated for the purpose of assisting the work of Compassion Through Action, a Los Angeles based homeless aid organization.”

The digital release was produced by L.A. native singer-songwriter Manda Mosher.  Mosher, one of the organizers behind the “Sandy Hook: A Benefit Concert”, was moved into action once more.

READ THE FULL STORY AT AMERICAN LIVE WIRE:
http://americanlivewire.com/artists-help-homeless-compassion-action/

RELATED:

BUY/DONATE : Compassion Through Action: A Benefit Album Vol. 1

Compassion Through Action Event Details Dec 15, 2013 

by trichordist

Want to Protect Speech? Strengthen Copyright | The Illusion Of More

If we want to strengthen free speech; if we want a hedge against invasions of civil liberty; if we want to speak truth to power, then we must continue to empower those who speak the truth and do so openly and professionally. To put it whimsically, a great bulwark against tyranny would be a class of unusually wealthy poets. As Congress resumes the process of copyright review in 2014, we should seek not to weaken these laws on an assumption of their irrelevance in the digital age, but to strengthen them on the grounds that they are more important than ever.

READ THE FULL POST AT:
http://illusionofmore.com/speech_strengthen_copyright/

by Trichordist Editor

Bloomberg ALMOST get’s it right about Spotify and Streaming… ALMOST…

Bloomberg almost gets it right. While Megan McArdle correctly identifies the problem with Spotify in the context of current market economics she fails to recognize the source of the downward pressure on online music distribution, Ad Funded Piracy.

Lou Reed and Dead Kennedys Go Public Against Ad Funded Piracy with Facebook Posts

As we have said many times, we don’t object to streaming as a business model, we only object to the poor revenue and compensation economics that these services currently provide. In other words, the economics of music streaming are a direct symptom of the larger disease of Ad Funded Piracy – this is why we hope to see more artists speaking up about the actual source of the problem as pirate sites are a for profit business that do not compensate artists at all.

BLOOMBERG:

In other words, while the cost side has improved, the revenue side has gotten worse even faster. People simply aren’t willing to pay very much for recorded music anymore. If you’re an artist, and especially if you’re a record label, that’s very bad news. Naturally, some artists want to shoot the messenger, blaming Spotify for their paltry payments. But Spotify is not the problem. The market is the problem. Spotify is just the messenger telling them what the market is now willing to pay for their songs.

We have a suggestion for any streaming music company executives who should happen across this post – if you really want to help musicians, why not start educating the media and musicians about the cause and source of why streaming economics are really so bad, Ad Funded Piracy.

Let’s join forces and aggregate the power of the community to restore a fair, ethical and balanced marketplace to music so that artists, songwriters and performers can have sustainable careers, and you too.

READ THE FULL STORY AT BLOOMBERG:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-09/spotify-isn-t-why-musicians-can-t-make-a-living.html

RELATED:

Google, Advertising, Money and Piracy. A History of Wrongdoing Exposed.

Over 50 Major Brands Supporting Music Piracy, It’s Big Business!

by trichordist

Internet firms ordered to block file-share sites | Irish Independent

THREE major music companies have been granted orders which will allow internet service providers here to block access to a file-sharing website as part of efforts to prevent “wholesale copyright theft” on “a grand scale”.

None of the defendants objected to the orders and the judge described them as “innocent” parties whose co-operation with a protocol aimed at preventing illegal downloading of copyright material indicated they realised the illegality and dishonesty involved in such activity and did not wish to be privy to it.

Several other ISPs – Eircom, Meteor, Magnet, Sky and Imagine Telecommunications – had indicated in correspondence with the music companies they were prepared to block the websites voluntarily provided the court made a blocking order to that effect against any ISP.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE IRISH INDEPENDENT:
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/internet-firms-ordered-to-block-fileshare-sites-29803417.html

by Trichordist Editor

French court orders search firms to block pirate sites | BBC

A court in France has ordered Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to block 16 video-streaming sites from their search results.

The court said the sites broke French intellectual property laws and were “almost entirely dedicated” to streaming content without the owners’ permission.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo must now take measures to ensure the blocked pages cannot be found in a list of search results.

ISPs, including Orange and Bouygues Telecom, will also have to prevent users from being able to access the sites.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25185819

by trichordist

Get Ready For The Streaming-Music Die-Off | ReadWrite

We’ve been saying for a while that we’re not opposed to music streaming as concept so much as we are about the revenue models and royalties. We’ve offered our criticisms that the math just never really adds up, even if you scale out Spotify to it’s logical conclusion.

We’ve also offered our suggestions for how these streaming services could offer a more robust and diverse environment to both artists and consumers. Looks like we’re not the only ones seriously questioning the economic validity of these models.

The streaming era is the next music industry ice age.

Beyond their broken business model, these companies share a lot of dubious promises to investors, shareholders and artists. Rdio hopes to get in the black by luring in more ad-supported subscribers. Spotify promises that when it scales up to 40 million paid users—it’s currently at 6 million—that artists will get paid five times what they make from the service today (the math works out, but that 40 million figure is a big “if”). Pandora, unprofitable and crippled by royalty fees as its user base grows, promises that mobile ad revenue can offset the revenue it’s hemorrhaging.

READ THE FULL STORY AT READ WRITE:
http://readwrite.com/2013/12/06/streaming-music-competition-pandora-rdio-spotify#awesm=~opsnA43Lt7QuiQ

by Trichordist Editor

Police crackdown on pirate site ads | BBC

“Operation Creative is being run… to really get to grips with a criminal industry that is making substantial profits by providing and actively promoting access to illegally obtained and copyrighted material,” said Supt Bob Wishart.

The scheme encourages offenders to change their behaviour so that they are operating within the law, he added.

“However, if they refuse to comply we now have the means to persuade businesses to move their advertising to different platforms and, if offending continues, for registrars to suspend the websites,” he said.

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25299593

by trichordist

David Lowery: Silicon Valley must be stopped, or creativity will be destroyed | SALON

Below is just one excerpt from the interview with the always insightful David Lowery in Salon.

Silicon Valley’s making money off the work of others. David Lowery is on a crusade for copyright, fairness and art

SALON : People sometimes use the Industrial Revolution metaphor. They talk about how factories replaced the artisan and the farmer, and it took decades for things like child labor, dangerous working conditions, and pollution and all the stuff that industry brought to Britain and the U.S. to be eradicated, or made humane and sustainable.

LOWERY: But whenever anybody — I mean, you’ve just brought up David Allen, and we’ve just posted this idea on my Trichordist blog that we should have an ethical, fair-trade Internet, but you’ve got people like David Allen saying you can’t have that. That would be like in the Industrial Revolution saying, “You can’t have a non-polluting factory; you can’t have a factory that doesn’t have child labor; you can’t have a factory that’s safe to work in.” Of course you can!

We’re the ****ing masters of our own destiny, we pass the laws for this country, we create this country, we decide what kind of a society we’re going to have — not the Internet. And, besides, the Internet is coded by humans. We can make the Internet do what it needs to do. I’m a technologist. I program computers. This is what I did before I played in bands.

There is nothing deterministic about the Internet. Basically, what these people are saying is that this is the first technology whereby we must change our principles to match the technology — that’s what these people are saying. Do you want to live in a world like that, with these people running it?

READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT SALON:
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/04/david_lowery_silicon_valley_must_be_stopped_or_creativity_will_be_destroyed/

by Trichordist Editor